Dear Diary
by Neuronerd
Summary: What does a serial killer do when he needs to vent his thoughts and feelings? He keeps a diary, of course.
1. Significant Others

**A/N: Back again with a project that will be updated on a sporadic basis as things come to mind. If you ever wanted to read Sylar's diary, here ya' go! **

**Significant Others**

Dear Diary:

It really isn't my habit to wallow in the mire of my own self-pity the way that some do almost as a matter of honor. Not to name names, but people like Peter Petrelli come to mind. For a guy who was born gagging on a silver spoon, he sure seems to feel as though he had a hard life. So his dad wasn't Mr. Cleaver, big deal. Given what a thorn in his side he was, you'd think he would have been grateful when I casually flung the fatal bullet at Arthur's forehead to finish him, but apparently not. Being moody isn't Peter's only problem, being indecisive is as well. To hate someone and not want them to suffer is completely illogical to me, but whatever. Lesson learned: don't do Peter any favors because even he doesn't know what he wants.

But that's kind of been the story of my life. Falling on my face, bleeding, figuring out why I fell in the first place, and picking myself up to hopefully avoid doing that again- but knowing I will and further knowing that the real problem was not my own doing, but usually being shoved down by another person in the first place. I'm convinced that if I could live on an island all by myself I would be perfectly fine and content, because it's when you have to deal with others that things get out of hand and you are left trying desperately to hang on and make sense of their hang-ups and actions like riding a bucking bronco. Trying to figure out the secret motivations and intentions of others at times feels like whiplash, and call me paranoid if you like, but I know from experience that everyone has an agenda. My inherent mistrust of everyone down to the Tooth Fairy is well founded, but I have to tell you that it is tiring, and although it doesn't look it, I'm not getting any younger.

Maybe it's midlife crisis, or the fact that I have variously awoken in pools of my own blood, face down in charred ashes, or scoured to the bone by being sandblasted like taking paint off an old car, but I have come to realize that other people suck. Seriously. I get that people don't like me either and that's fine. I get that a guy like me can ruffle feathers, rock the boat, and generally go against the predictable grain of society, but even so there comes a time when my talents can be useful and despite what anyone thinks, I can be convinced to use them for objectives other than purely selfish gain. The problem is, every time I have tried to cooperate and do for the greater good, I have tasted the bitter poison of betrayal. Every. Time.

See, what people don't understand about me is that I really do want to feel connected, to be something more, to affect the world and use my abilities for those who mean the most to me. It's all I ever wanted, even from the beginning. Believe it or not, I don't want people to fear me. No, really, I don't. I want them to respect me. I want the other heroes in all their righteous indignation to realize that I am just as powerful and trustworthy as they are. Well, modesty aside, I am in all actuality _more_ powerful, but one shouldn't squabble over semantics when they are trying to build bridges. I have made an effort to show them that I can change, but so far it hasn't really worked out for me and I'm starting to get a little discouraged by it to be honest.

I am not a fool. I know that they can't be expected to see the light and simply forget all that I have done. I know that at least part of their mental block was built by my own hands, but what they fail to realize is that they have done just as much, if not worse, to me and yet I can at least try to suspend my own reticence even when I know that they are just using me. I won't lie and tell you it was easy for me to play an obedient dog as Bennet's Company partner. You can't imagine how difficult it was for me to casually lean against the car while he plotted by death within earshot because I knew that of any of them, he actually stood a good chance at pulling it off. I won't even discuss how painful having the prospect of belonging being ripped away from me on so many occasions was. Angela really had me believing that I was special, that she cared for me, that I mattered. Same for Elle. She made me feel whole and content like I never felt before, both when I first met her and while we lost our powers in the eclipse. I really wanted to believe in a future where we could be happy together, where I had someone who loved me wholly and unconditionally, but deep down I would have to question whether or not I even deserve such a thing. It just seems fitting that I live out the rest of eternity alone, don't ask me why.

I tried to patch things up with Claire, but so far she's not having any of it and I guess I can't blame her. If I put myself in her shoes, I would be a little miffed as well and at least just a little skeptical of the idea that the man who tried to kill me now wanted to be my friend, but she doesn't get it. I didn't want to kill her, I never did. Technically, I don't want to kill anyone, but it's just an unfortunate side effect of my method of power acquisition. People don't survive the shock of having their brain exposed and probed like she did, but that's not my fault. What she doesn't understand is that I'm no longer a threat to her, I have what I want and that's it. I have no desire to terrorize her, to make her afraid of her own shadow, or to make her feel as though she always has to look over her shoulder because I know what that feels like and it's a miserable existence. She probably will never come to understand the ways in which our lives run parallel, but we are more alike than she would ever admit. Perhaps in time she will come around, but for the meantime she's more comfortable with seeing me as a monster, a soulless demon sent to plague her and all of mankind. Bad as that is, at least she isn't ignoring me the way everyone else used to before I came to be what I am. Infamy is only slightly better than invisibility.

But be all that as it may, I am left with a sense that no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I work, or how far I bend over backwards to try and make them see my value as a human and an ally, I am not finding much success and I am lonely and tired of the fight. I'm starting to think that it's all a fool's errand to make people love you. They don't, and I'm starting to suspect that they never will. The question is: where do I go from here? I know who I am and what I have to offer even if no one else can see it, but how much longer am I willing to play the game before I give up and walk away? I'm growing a little tired of being unappreciated and unnoticed for my positive accomplishments while people like Peter almost blow up the city in a blinding nuclear fury and get a free pass. Everyone falls short and makes a few mistakes, it's a part of life and yet I can't seem to overcome the perception that I wanted things to be as they are. The balance of me is voting to just walk away and forget everyone because I will never find the acceptance I need and deserve, and yet a very small part of me so badly wants it because I know that if given half a chance I can prove myself and just maybe take my first step on the road to redemption.

So long as I live in a world with other people, my own personal progress will be dependent on their action or inaction and it is supremely frustrating. I don't want Claire to despise me, or HRG to dream of ways to kill me at night, or Peter to feel sorry or superior to me depending on his shifting mood, but I can't control how they perceive me and I can't completely turn away no matter how much I may want to. Life would be so much easier if I lived alone on an island…


	2. Forever Young

**A/N: Wow! Thanks to everyone who reviewed and marked this little ditty with alerts and favorites. And I am open to ideas for him to ponder should there be any issues you would really like him to mull (Ralynn- yours will be in the mix eventually). Cheers!**

**Forever Young**

Dear Diary:

I used to think that the idea of living forever was quite a good one. Who wouldn't want to be immune to the slow decay of the body and the ravages of time? In my case it carried the added bonus of cheating time itself, opening a vast horizon of abilities to be harvested at my discretion and leisure like so many wildflowers spread as far as the eye could see, just waiting to be picked one by one, offering an almost limitless potential for my own personal evolution. I could laugh and frolic through this wonderland until the end of time itself and that didn't seem like a bad proposition at all. It also meant that I would survive numerous attempted murders and surely people like Bennett know this, especially since it was his own precious Claire-Bear that made it all possible, but it doesn't stop him from trying in the slightest.

I have found myself groggy and strapped to a table in some warehouse or deep, dark pit with no real idea of how I got there on more occasions than I like to admit thanks to him. Truthfully, it's a little baffling the way he always seems to be able to do the things he does to me considering he has no abilities himself and I'm the closest thing to a demigod that has walked the earth since the days of Zeus and his ilk. What's even more striking is the fact that he knows his efforts are futile, that although he can make me hurt and suffer for a time, taunting me, trying to play on my insecurities, that at the end of the day I will find a way to escape. He knows this and yet he seems to take great pleasure in his little covert torture operations. I can't describe the sick smile he gets when he can manage to make me scream and the twisted pleasure he gets from watching me writhe in pain. I can't believe that people think _I'm_ the monster. He's so convinced that he is in the right and that he's trying to protect the world from me that he can't bring himself to realize that he created me- he made me what I am. I might not have been happy with my life, but left to my own devices I can't imagine that the very thought of murdering anyone would have ever crossed my mind. But, as they say, the genie is out of the bottle now and there's no stuffing me back in no matter how much he or anyone else may want to.

As bothersome as Bennet is, he won't live forever like I will. He can fill the rest of his days with chasing me, plotting against me, or fantasizing about ways he'd like to watch me pay for my crimes, but one day he'll be gone and I'll have the last laugh so to speak. There is a certain sense of comfort in that knowledge, but more and more I'm starting to wonder if living forever is really what I wanted. As pathetic as he was, my biological father made me stop and think when he told me that I'd just have that much longer to suffer with my boredom and restlessness and I hate to admit it, but I'm already starting to feel it and I haven't even lived out my own natural lifespan. I don't want to even contemplate what the future holds.

Where I used to see limitless possibility now I mostly see vapid hollowness and I find myself wishing I could die just so I don't have to sit through another episode of Jersey Shore or yet another season of people singing, making cakes, vying to be the most cutthroat employee of a shallow tycoon, or trying to see how many children their bodies can possibly reproduce as though they were personally responsible for repopulating a postwar civilization. The gleeful celebration of stupidity is both astounding and sad. I'm not an idealist, I don't believe that utopia is possible given our innate compulsion for competition and tribe confederacy, but I can't possibly see how the current direction of what is considered human achievement will end in anything other than utter disaster. When we are all focused on the latest celebrity rehab victim or buried in our devices texting and tweeting our latest mundane act of triviality, the bigger questions of our existence go unanswered. Is there life on other planets? How can we make less of an impact on the environment? How can we solve the issues of inadequate medical care and food insecurity? It might come as a shock to those who think they know me to discover that these things are important to me. I'm not a humanist the way Peter is, but while people say we need to fix these things for their grandchildren and great grandchildren, I say I need to fix them because it's my future too.

Ok, I admit that it is entirely self-serving because my regenerative ability will make me immune to the endemic problems that these issues pose. I will never need medical care, I can live with the potentially harmful effects of pollution and if it ever came down to it, I don't even have to eat because it's not like my body will let me starve to death. I might even be able to survive being blasted with spaceship lasers during an alien invasion, or ray guns, or whatever advanced technology they may have, but I don't want to live in that world if I don't have to. I can guarantee that should food and water become scarce, or the city sent into panic as a spacecraft looms overhead while people run screaming for their lives that I will do what I have to in order to ensure my own survival. I will take what I want just as I have because it will truly be survival of the fittest and there is no one else out there that is fitter, faster, or more determined to do what it takes than me. I will endure while the Snookies, Jerry Spingers, and Rod Blagojeviches of the world fall victim to the tide of evolution. In some ways, I almost wish that something like that would befall civilization to rid it of the weak and useless, scour humanity down to the point that only the toughest, smartest, and most resourceful remain to deal with what's really important in life.

I'm doing the best I can, but I'm only one man and even so I have standards. I wouldn't take any ability that Lindsay Lohan may have no matter how useful it might be. I'm not sure if such a thing exists, but I'm a little concerned that she might harbor the equivalent of ability syphilis and I'm not positive that my healing ability could handle that. I am certain that most of the cast of Jersey Shore have fallen victim to an as of yet unknown strain of brain sucking bacteria that has more or less rendered them zombies. Then again, it could just be the sheer amount of hair product they use. Less really is more, guys. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I can't imagine being stuck on the subway with any of them, listening to them giggle slurred, half articulated thoughts, muddled in a thick cloud of bad cologne and body spray while I worry about sustaining puncture wounds from their spiky, puffer fish hair. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is our future. These brilliant individuals will be the people making our laws and performing surgeries in hospitals. Suddenly, Bennet doesn't seem so bad. At least he stands for something and does his job with tenacity and integrity even if his motivations are suspect. I can't stand him, but he's old school and I respect that. I would probably respect him more if we were on the subway together and he took out a few of the mouth breathers with his secret agent moves he uses on me. It would not only benefit the whole of society, it would give me a chance to observe so I could avoid getting captured by him again. A true win-win.


	3. My Hero

**A/N: Thanks to Mlle. Verity for the concept! I might do a cracky version as you suggested, we'll see if he ever gets into a better mood...he'll have to pop some Prozac first. **

**My Hero**

Dear Diary:

What is a hero? For most, I think that they have a mental image of someone like Peter in spandex tights and a flowing cape, a selfless do-gooder who would gladly be run over by a speeding train to save a kitten. A martyr that sacrifices him or herself for the greater good to be fondly recalled as that guy or girl who bravely took one for the team. I am not that person. Not exactly, anyway. See, I believe that good is a matter of perspective and ambiguously defined. I get that people are logically lazy and like to simplify things to the point of absurdity and I certainly understand the desire to neatly categorize things into cubicles of either-or. It's easy and it makes things more comfortable to deal with, but it obscures the reality of the situation and offers a false sense of security and certainty. A world of grays is anxiety provoking- no pun intended. People generally prefer to keep their rose-colored glasses firmly attached to their faces because they know that the world really is a bit darker than that, but they don't want to admit it. They don't want to conceive of the idea that a person like me can actually be considered a hero in some bizarre, upside down fashion, but it really isn't that strange at all- at least to me.

The very notion of good vs. evil is ancient, and I'm hardly the first to be, perhaps a bit unfairly, branded as a villain. But our culture certainly does love the dichotomy of saint and sinner. I almost bought into it at first myself, in fact. After I killed Brian Davis, I was so wracked with guilt over it that I spent hours begging forgiveness from the higher being I was trained to believe in. I was so consumed with regret and self-loathing that I even attempted to take my own life- an act that was sure to damn my soul to Hell, but I felt as though it didn't matter because it was what I deserved anyway. I was the prototypical good guy: meek, quiet, unassuming, a faithful son that did everything he was supposed to. I worked a mundane job, tried to make my mother proud, and ate more goddamned tuna fish sandwiches than I could stomach. But with the swing of that crystal I crossed a line I could never return from. I was a murderer, a vile, twisted, selfish, cruel man who was no longer a fit member of polite society.

For the longest time I was convinced that everyone was right to hate me, to think that I was unworthy of the air I breathed, and to try to rid me from the earth because with every life I took, every ability I stole, I hated myself for needing to do it. I can only imagine it's similar to what a drug addict feels when they steal or lie to support their habit. They don't want to hurt others, but the physical compulsion for the next hit is so strong that they have to. It simply became a game of me vs. them- I would keep taking lives until they took mine. But with time I came to realize that while it might be seen as unfortunate that people died at my hands, it could equally be argued that it was simply evolution in action. No one knows for sure, but I can imagine that the first hominid that had the audacity to stand upright to pick fruit from trees while his knuckle-dragging compatriots simply waited for fruit to fall to the ground probably was reviled for doing so. And yet, by bucking social convention, he pushed the species forward. In my own way, I might very well be picking my own fruit to once again provide the next great leap for mankind.

People like Peter get all the credit for every good deed they do, yet they forget that it was he that was going to blow up New York in Kirby Plaza. There is good and evil in all of us, but it seems as though no one wants to acknowledge even the slightest positive contribution that I might make even if it only comes to light after the fact. I can save lives as well as take them even if Peter and Claire will never thank me for it. It was me who gently slowed Peter's 7 story fall out of Arthur's office so he wouldn't splatter all over the sidewalk, and it was me who rescued Claire from the swirling vortex that Canfield created. I even found it in myself to save bennet from the bank robbers and go back for Luke at the diner. I even took bullets for him. I've been shot many times before, it hurts like hell and it never gets any easier, but if that wasn't heroic I don't know what is. However, the memory of these things have faded in the minds of those who stand in judgment as fast as the bullet wounds healed, leaving no trace that anything ever happened. Out of sight, out of mind. All they ever remember is the things I do that upset them, but is that even such a bad thing? Can they really say that my dispatching Doyle was a bad move on my part? Would they really want a borderline pedophiliac/rapist having his way with women as the notion struck him? Danko? Really? The man who was determined to initiate his own eradication program against specials like some reimagined final solution? Bob Bishop and Arthur Petrelli, two of the powers that be, pulling at the strings of us all to do their bidding through lies and manipulation. And then there was Nathan.

Peter will probably never come to see exactly what kind of a man his brother was, he will never be able to admit outwardly what he surely knows to be true: that Nathan ultimately was a detriment to our kind. Behind all the million dollar smiles and good natured hugs was a man who was just as depraved as I, albeit in a more subtle way. Nathan was a true Petrelli, made in the mold of Arthur and Angela themselves, a world class schemer and backstabber of epic proportion. If I live a million years, which I likely will, I will never for a second believe that he had anything but malicious intent with his plan to round up specials. He wasn't entirely an evil genius, he was a pawn in the Company's plans as much as anyone, but he too had his own ambitions. I know, I had his memories for a time. No one would ever believe me if I told them of his vision to have specials warehoused and tagged like so much inventory for future use when the time came. He fully intended to go through with it because he thought it was the best way to contain the flow of change, his very job as a politician depended on it. Even though Peter himself was captured and found himself chained, drugged, and sporting an orange jumpsuit, he still to this day maintains a staggering level of denial. Rose colored glasses indeed.

I didn't kill Nathan. It has come to my attention that people are under the assumption that I was responsible for his death, but it is patently false. A convenient ploy that provides them a scapegoat and target for misplaced rage, but entirely untrue and I can only assume that Peter was the one to start the rumor mill churning. I can understand why he thought I had something to do with it since he was the only other living being who watched me pull myself off the car, heal, and walk away. But the truth of the matter is Nathan took his own life and I had no idea what happened between the time Peter crucified me with a nail gun and I woke up several stories below with a windshield wiper up my ass. The whole thing was just as baffling to me as it was to him, but I was happy to have my body back and that was the impetus for the friendly wave and smile, nothing more. But even if I did kill Nathan, would it have been such a bad thing? I would have prevented his plan from coming to fruition, I would have kept Peter and Claire from living like caged animals, being bled dry and experimented on. And if I didn't get my body back, I couldn't have stopped Peter's girlfriend from taking out everyone in Central Park or Sullivan from destroying the world. No one thanks me for that either.

I would argue that I am a hero in my own right. What others see as wrong, as sin, or as depravity, I see as means to an end. I cull the weak, the undeserving, the very people that pose a threat to the greater good even if others don't understand my methods. I'm not interested in morality or social codes, my only interest lie in furthering my own progression and by extension that of the species. Every yin needs a yang, the light needs the darkness in which to shine. I'm the man in black, literally, because that's what society is comfortable with. It's convenient, neat, and orderly. But I live and move in a world of shadows and within the murkiness, I define my own sense of purpose and direction. I'm not a hero in the conventional sense of the word, but actions speak louder than words and so far I think I'm headed in the right direction.


	4. Bad Romance

**Bad Romance**

Dear Diary:

I was out and about today and I noticed an ad for the re-release of "Titanic" in the uberexpensive, overhyped, and mostly uninspired 3D format. My general distaste for romantic drama and wearing silly glasses aside, I was dismayed by Hollywood's utter lack of imagination in trying to squeeze one last pitiful drop from that particular cash cow. I admit that I am probably one of only a handful of humans on the planet that haven't seen it, but the overly sappy music that accompanied the young couple's onscreen attempt at flying was enough of a red flag for me. The only thing I know about the plot is the historical account of the real ship that sank, which I'm sure was less than faithfully recounted for audiences, and the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio's character died frozen to a floating door while his girlfriend watched. Oh, and something about a huge diamond. If I were somehow coerced into seeing this tripe, I could only imagine that while everyone around me wept at the beautiful love story and heartache of loss, I would thoughtfully munch on my popcorn and ponder the geologic processes required to make such a diamond and the general engineering specifications of the ship itself. The whole love story arc wouldn't be completely lost on me, though. I'd wonder exactly why the hell he didn't get up on the door with her rather than become a tasty frozen treat for the creatures of the sea. There's no love in that, that's sheer stupidity if you ask me.

But it did make me wonder about my own life. Was there ever anyone who I would be willing to risk hypothermia or become fish bait for? The short answer is no. Only a very select few have ever truly meant anything to me and of those, only one is still alive. This is something I've never mentioned to anyone and I'm not the kind that believes in love at first sight or anything, but if there is such a thing as a soul mate…I think it's Peter. I know it sounds crazy, but we seem to have this weird kind of Odd Couple bromance thing going. It's nothing either of us have planned or even dare talk about, but I know he feels it too no matter if we are fighting or working together. There's this strange yet comfortable tension that settles in the room like a polarized magnetic filed of oscillating positive and negative charges. We hate and respect one another in equal measure and intensity and I never really know how it's going to go when we meet, but unlike everyone else, I don't seem to mind the ambiguity so much. Is it strange to be so ambivalent about the only other person on the planet that had a realistic chance in actually killing me?

Peter annoys the hell out of me to be sure. His overly moody, indecisive, hopelessly optimistic attitude and refusal to believe that anyone is beyond hope is simply grating. No matter how many times he is kicked in the teeth, betrayed, and left for dead he refuses to think that the person who did it actually meant to. I tend to remember when people double cross me, and it has happened so often that my default setting is one of innate skepticism, but Peter seems to have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to things like that. A part of me sneers at the fact that he was born in a position of power and privilege, he was never wanting for anything while I barely had enough to survive. It's luck of the draw, but I can't help but think that we were (or should have been) switched at birth. He would have been a much better fit for Virginia to moon over. He could have truly made her proud in ways that I just couldn't bring myself to. I should have been the one to lounge in a huge comfortable bed in my mansion in Midtown Manhattan, being chauffeured to and from my private school. I would have appreciated the advantage and benefits that came with the Petrelli fortune and influence, but he largely turned his back on it all while I fought and struggled for everything I had.

His total disregard for his own self-preservation is astounding. Who just packs up and flies to BFE Texas on a moment's notice to save some girl he never even met before? Peter, that's who. Who faces down a known killer with no powers and does it all knowing that he will die in the end? Peter. Who jumps off midrise buildings just to see if he can fly? Uh huh. I have only done one truly insane thing in my life along those lines and it was facing Bennet during the eclipse to spare Elle, but even then I was only planning on hanging around long enough to distract him. Had I known that I was going to end up with a Cuban necktie, I might have reconsidered. But that's the thing with Peter, even when he _knows_ what the outcome of his actions will be, he does it anyway. He's generally like a lava lamp to me: fun to watch, but not too bright.

That's not to say I don't have a healthy respect for him. Although my IQ has to be at least 2 standard deviations above his, he still does fairly well for himself because what he lacks in brains he compensates for in brawn. You wouldn't think it by looking at him, but he can pack a very solid punch when he wants to. I know, I've been on the receiving end far too many times to think otherwise. He is usually a tree hugger, but he can serve up some blinding hot pain when he feels it's necessary and he won't apologize for rearranging your face. Those are probably the times when I'm most grateful for my healing ability. For a man who makes a living easing the suffering of others, he sure can inflict some of his own. But beyond his brawling abilities, there was a time when we believed we were brothers and it was probably one of the most peaceful times of my life. Although he was skeptical, he accepted me as I was, knowing about my past and forgiving me for trying to kill him at Kirby Plaza. Who does that? Peter.

It's not a carnal thing at all the way that Maya was. Like most men, for me sex and love are entirely separate concepts and just because I might do the horizontal mambo with someone, it doesn't at all mean that I think they are the neatest thing since sliced bread. It's like having a really good steak in that it might taste great, but it's not exactly what one would call a spiritual experience. Elle may have come a bit closer. Well, in fact she did- at first. She was beautiful, a shining ray of hope in my bleak world. The lifeboat to my floating door so to speak. But it didn't work out and sooner or later I came to realize how shallow she, and by some measure, I was. We couldn't have any sort of life together because when I reached for her and she flinched, or I looked into her eyes and saw a thin veil of deceit covering a well of fear and loathing, I knew she could never be the one for me. For all her talk of the world being ours for the taking, she hated me for who I was.

I'm just glad I saw the writing on the wall before I was trapped in some hellish recreation of my parent's relationship. As much as I faulted Samson for selling me like a piece of furniture and Martin for sealing the deal just so he could walk away from Virginia guilt free as long as she had me as a consolation prize, I can see how it might be a better option than being stuck with people you absolutely despise. Would I ever have voluntarily frozen to death for Elle? Probably not. But if it were ever Peter and I in that situation, things would be different because I know that he'd be the one in the water turning blue out of some misguided notion that it was noble or that I should be saved. Maybe that's the difference. He's the only one I know that would put himself in harm's way for me when no one else in my life has, and that's why if we were ever in that situation I would at least consider sharing the door with him, or possibly taking turns.


	5. Disappointment

**Disappointment **

Dear Diary:

The thought of disappointment has been weighing on my mind lately. I know that life is full of it, but is there ever a point in your life when you can stop the clawing, placating, the constant struggle for gain and just take a breath? Will there ever be a time when I can just say that finally everything is good and I can just be happy with what I have and be left alone? Along with other pithy and generally unhelpful colloquialisms, it seems that there truly is no rest for the wicked.

The primary cause for my restlessness is no doubt the hunger that came wrapped with my so called gift. I didn't understand at the time that it was a package deal, but it is what it is and there's no going back save for the occasional astronomical probability of eclipse. No one aside from Peter, who had my ability for a time, will probably ever begin to comprehend what it's like to be driven to do the things I do to satisfy the itch. The true miracle is that I don't give in more often than I do given the relentless and constant urge it presents. I'm not going to lie and pretend that I haven't considered just going on a blind spree of gluttony, taking every ability I can find no matter how trivial until I am exhausted- however long that would take- if it meant that I could have some peace from the incessant compulsion. Given the voracity of my hunger paired with regeneration and we could be talking about a perpetual motion machine, which is really why I haven't given the idea much more than a passing thought. People think I'm Satan himself now, imagine what they would think if I laid the entire planet to waste, taking out every special along the way. As it stands, I can't tell you how many victims have given up their powers to me in my pursuit of perfection. Dozens? Scores? Unlike Samson who claimed that he didn't recall killing my mother in front of me as a child because she (and presumably I) was inconsequential to him, I do largely remember my victims. I would like to think that it's a sign that I have something of a soul left in me. I don't mourn them so much as remember who they were when I use an acquired ability, a source code of sorts. Every time someone lies to me I think of delicious cake, which may in the long run prove to be an unfortunate association for me to make, but I can't help that I like cake and if it makes being lied to more palatable then so be it.

No matter how many abilities I take it will probably never be enough, I know that. But while there may never be total satiation of my thirst, I have previously approached a point where what I had was good enough to allow me to go longer and longer between new additions. Maybe not a completely normal existence as far as the general population is concerned because any murder is still frowned upon regardless of interval, but likely as close to normalcy as I'll ever get. Just when I think I can relax a little, take the foot off the accelerator and coast, something happens to make me swerve and go off a cliff.

Forget the prevailing sense of disappointment that I lived with for so long in knowing that I should be something better, but couldn't or simply didn't want to, and the rejection from all that had a hand in raising me, or even the cruel betrayal of Elle in pretending to love me. Bitter as it was, that sort of garden-variety disappointment happens to everyone. Parents abandoning children, marriages broken beyond repair, and heartache are all part of living a flawed existence with ordinary humans, but I'm not ordinary. The kind of disappointment that I feel is much more than that.

It's quite a feeling to know that you are something much greater than anyone could ever be, that you hold so much potential that you could literally change the course of history if you so desired. Very few have held such influence to impact world events, but I am one of those people and although world domination isn't on my agenda, I know I could if I really wanted to. Virginia would certainly be proud, but then again maybe not. First the presidency, then ruler of the galactic federation, and perhaps even God himself. There was always something bigger and better on the horizon for her. The ever elusive goal of satisfaction was almost as maddening as chasing it, but she and I had very different standards of fulfillment. I had the world at my fingertips and it was good enough for me- until a quiet little viral stain named Shanti took it all away from me.

It's entirely devastating when you realize that you are once more utterly normal and powerless, but even more shocking when you know that it was done to you as an experiment completely against your will and without your consent. Even prisoners and mental patients have basic human rights that protect them from harmful or uninformed medical procedures, but that courtesy wasn't extended to me. No one asked me how I felt about being injected with a disease that would not only eradicate my arsenal of abilities, but would also surely take my life as well. I was sick, in pain, suffering, barely able to walk at some points and forced to stumble like a drunk man at others, and no one cared. Granted, I never really told anyone how desperately ill I was, but the fact that I was perpetually slicked with sweat, panting, and dancing on the edge of delirium should have indicated that something wasn't right, but I think they all just assumed I was hot because we were in Mexico. And they didn't really know me well enough to realize that the mental haze that I fought my way through was anything but normal for me. Part of it was the sickness brought on by the virus coupled with recovering from back alley thoracic surgery, but mostly my lethargy and sense of hopelessness was my mourning the loss of my greatness.

Of course I got my abilities back, but it wasn't easy by any means and it wasn't the last time I found myself at a loss. Each time my powers were absent or inaccessible, I felt it: the cataclysmic mediocrity that I loathed at such a primal level. How could you have power like that and just be fine without it? Why would anyone give you the time of day or think anything of you if you didn't have the capacity to make them take notice of you? To recognize your true potential? Having everything I worked for, the empire I built one acquisition at a time, be torn away and crumble into dust was almost debilitating. It was a denial of my ultimate purpose, a rejection of all that was due me, a revocation of all that was rightfully mine, and it was astoundingly unfair. But, each time I found deep within myself the drive and determination not to be outdone by the schemes of others. I had a destiny to fulfill and I couldn't allow anyone to circumvent that no matter how hard it was, just as fish must struggle mightily against the current to return upstream and dodge the hungry jaws of bears looking to thwart them along the way. They can try to take me down, try to distract or disarm me, but even though they have nearly achieved their aims, I'm still standing and stronger than ever. Yes, disappointment is bitter, but revenge in the form of improbable success is even sweeter.


	6. It's About Time

**It's About Time**

Dear Diary:

Time used to be an intimate friend of mine: constant, immutable, and dependable. While people may throw me for a loop with their constantly shifting loyalties and agendas, time is predictable and safe. No matter what else happens in the world, a second will always be a second anywhere in the known universe irrespective of political ideology, geographic boundary, or personal ambition. Time is composed of discreet units that have a definite beginning and end, they are free of ambiguity and interpretation. It was present at the beginning of our existence, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, it's all around us now, directing our flow of daily activities, and it will be in force long after we are gone. You just can't get any more dependable and certain than that. But I learned the hard way that even the most steady of cosmological constants can be deceiving thanks to an ex-cop named Parkman.

Time ceased being my ally when I was trapped within my own mind in Parkman's basement after I voluntarily went there seeking help to end my wicked ways. Looking back now it kind of seems pointless for him to do what he did, and slightly cruel to boot, but he's one of the 'good' guys, so no one will ever fault him for it. Might as well let that ship sail. Makes me wonder how many other guys he's buried in his basement like John Wayne Gacy, though. Although I'm trying my best to be different and not return to my old ways, I have to admit that I might target him for my next acquisition not out of retribution (although he richly deserves it), but his ability makes him able to commit the perfect crime. He can make others think what he wants, victim and potential witness alike. That could be very useful in my line of work and we all know that I am just a tinge smarter than he is, making my ability to refine and control it far greater than even he could imagine. Oh the things I could do with that. Angela would become child's play, Bennet easy to thwart, and everyone else could be convinced that I'm no longer the boogeyman they think I am. I bet I could even get a free coffee at Starbucks once in awhile. I would like to think it could be useful to get better service at the post office or DMV when it comes time to renew my driver's license, but I guess I shouldn't get too far ahead of myself.

Being trapped in my own personal purgatory was a lot like waiting in line at the post office, wondering if I was the only one there. It was only after the fact that I have come to appreciate the exact construct of my own prison. It seems it really was a case of be careful what you wish for in that my solitary nature preferred to be alone- and I was…profoundly. My little world was completely devoid of any living thing, but it was filled with structure in what I can only assume was my innate need and appreciation for logic and inanimate objects. Now, I don't know if it was entirely my construct or if Matt stacked the deck a little, but it was probably the worst experience of my life. I was, for a time, the last man on earth. Time was no longer the secure safety blanket it used to be. In fact, it had become the eternal enemy.

There certainly was a limit to my own curiosity and I found it relatively quickly. There are only so many desk draws to be opened in random office buildings and apartments to be explored. The thing was, rather than a trove of personal effects one would expect to find, the rooms I peeked into were empty- almost like model mock-ups of living spaces. Empty. The only place I found remotely useful was the library where books I had read were housed and even I was a little surprised at just how many works of literature I had consumed in my lifetime. Some I remembered well and some not so much, but they too held no comfort for me. There was no sense of accomplishment for reading a book cover to cover the way there used to be. I used to view time as a commodity, and reading or the acquisition of knowledge was always regarded as a worthwhile investment, but when forever stretches beyond the horizon and it all seems so meaningless, it loses all value. It no longer mattered if I read Shakespeare or sat staring at a wall, it was all the same to me.

The sun rose and set with regularity and this was the only gauge with which I had to measure the length of my sentence. There was no shortage of watches laying around to remind me of each passing moment with soft ticking, almost like they were mocking me. I tinkered with them almost out of habit, but it was boring to tell the truth. There were no customers waiting to take them home, no sense of ultimate purpose in making them run right, just an abject feeling of having nothing better to do. It was like my old life as a watchmaker, only infinitely worse because my fear of inconsequentiality had been realized. There's nothing more futile than spending your time fixing objects that no one will care about. Unpaid, unappreciated and unknown. Yes, it was my own version of hell.

For the longest time I had only my own echoing voice to keep me company and I admit that I nearly went mad. I'll also admit that the thought of just diving off the tallest building I could climb also crossed my mind, but even now I'm not entirely sure why I didn't attempt it. Maybe a part of me knew it would be painful but utterly futile and that seemed much worse than roaming the streets late at night mumbling to myself about how unfair it all was. Imagine laying on the sidewalk in excruciating pain, bleeding, body broken, and knowing that even if you could manage to drag yourself to the nearest hospital that there wouldn't be anyone there to help put you back together. Although objects like food and books seemed to appear just when they were needed, I'm pretty sure that while gauze and the like might be available, pain medicine wouldn't be. Through all my run-ins with Bennet and sometimes even Peter, I've become pretty good at dealing with things myself, but something like that would absolutely require another person's help and Matt made sure that wasn't a possibility.

I never quite figured out all the rules to the mental prison, but I don't think I could have actually died much the same as a dream state. It's either because it was all just in my head, or it could have also been due to my own ambivalence. I wanted for it all to end, but I also knew that I deserved it. Despite my own wishes to change, at the time I wasn't sure I could do it on my own which was why I sought Matt's help and ended up almost sleeping with the fishes. The whole trust thing has never been easy for me and he didn't ease my suspicions in the least by pulling his little stunt, but I guess that I was ok with being trapped because at the very least it meant I couldn't hurt anyone else. I simply didn't have the opportunity to. During my stretch, I had come to realize that time is a precious thing. When you have too much of it you take it for granted and lose all motivation to do anything be it hurtful or beneficial. But more importantly, time only has meaning in relation to others. Yes time existed before us and it will continue to do so, but it is only filled with moments of meaning that we give it. Each second is like a container- it can remain empty or we can use it to hold memories, actions, or feelings. It once again has purpose for me and while I would never want to go back to my mental hell, I can say that I made the best use of my time by learning from it.


	7. Harpies

**Harpies**

Dear Diary:

I have always tried to pride myself on being a gentleman, particularly to women. Even when I was at my worst, I never brutalized anyone that didn't deserve it because while a little psychological suspense is one thing, prolonged torture is quite another and I've been through enough of it to have developed a well defined distaste for it. Brutality is easy, an almost default setting of our primal nature, but it takes real effort and genius to construct an intellectually stimulating game of cat and mouse. But for all the bad rap that men garner for our tendency to violence, I believe that no one said it better than the Bard himself that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. While men will explode in a rage and perpetrate some of the most incredible acts of atrocity, we tend to burn hot but fast and we are soon spent. Women will slowly smolder for years, silently seething and let me tell you that once the spark ignites the flame, there is no putting it out. Ever.

I am of course, referring to Claire. My path has crossed many women before her, but even with their incomprehensible idiosyncrasies (which I have since wisely learned to never mention out loud) I was largely able to navigate the at times choppy waters of vastly differing gender perspectives. Unlike some of my more chauvinistic counterparts, I don't view one approach or the other as inherently good or bad, and I have even managed to learn a thing or two from my female colleagues. Regrettably, it was usually things like how to appear as though I was harmless or in love through various facial expressions and tone of voice in order to get what I wanted, but I was paying attention to the overall message. While I can and have taken by force what I wanted, I have learned that cooperative negotiation works as well if not better in some circumstances- a classically feminine trait. People often accuse me of being a scheming manipulator, but if I am guilty, women are the grand masters of the dark art and all I know I learned from them.

If one required evidence, they need look no further than Angela as a shining example of connivery of stunning magnitude. I still shake my head in wonder at her gall sometimes. And if anyone needed convincing of my superhuman sense of restraint, they need only consider the fact that I haven't killed her for her invasive and shameless exploitation of my need for a mother's love. She doesn't even love her own biological children let alone me, Virginia tried and failed in her own fundamentally flawed way, and my biological mother? Well, I'll never know for sure but even though I don't really remember much about her, I do have a lingering sense that she thought I was something special- in a _good_ way. After all, she did lose her life because she refused to leave me behind. That I do remember in stunning clarity considering I was a preschooler at the time who's vision was poor enough to warrant having to wear glasses. I guess I was prematurely cerebral or precociously dorky depending on how you look at it. Whatever the case may be, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that watching your mom bleed in a parking lot is not a good thing for a young kid to witness and I do find myself wondering what she was like. She had to be something truly special to live with Samson, that's for sure, but like father like son and that has me worried for my own future.

I'm not so concerned that I would kill anyone that close to me out of sheer spite the way he did, and I certainly wouldn't entertain the thought of doing it in front of my child if I ever had one. Granted I didn't spend a lot of time around him, but it was long enough to realize that we differed significantly in our respective abilities. I may have inherited my IA and therefore my hunger from him, but that's where the similarities apparently end. Somewhere around the time he pinned me to the wall with arrows through the shoulders in an absurdly futile and desperate attempt to take my healing ability, it became clear to me that he operated on an almost reflexive plane of existence rather than carefully planning his attack the way that I do. It should have been blatantly clear to him the moment he watched my hand heal that he couldn't kill me or control me the way he might have done to my mother, yet he blindly lashed out and it was all too easy for me to escape with a little theatrical acting much like waving a bright red cape in front of a charging bull only to sidestep with flair at the last possible second. He didn't even know his own power well enough to know that it wasn't working and I found that almost even more pathetic than his sickness. What my mother may have ever seen in him, I will never know. Maybe he had some kind of mind control over her or something, but even that adds just yet another layer of wretchedness to his existence that he would have to force another to be with him against her will. It's akin to rape in my book. Although I could have, I've never forced a woman to be with me in any capacity and I never will. Sure being lonely as I was while I was Gabriel the watchmaker sucked, but my conscience was clear. The thought of dragging some poor woman into a dark alley to satisfy my own desires was just about as far from my mind as you can get and even now, the very notion sickens me.

Yes, I have been guilty of playing romantic opossum in order to get what I wanted, but let's look at the evidence. Exhibit #1: Elle- while not exactly the first time I've ever kissed a girl, she was perhaps more special to me for reasons that border on nostalgia. I didn't know at the time that her timing was no accident, but to me she came at just the right moment to save me from myself like the cherub she appeared to be. She caught me at my most vulnerable, at a moment when I didn't really want to die but knew it was probably for the greater good. Tragic, but necessary. She offered me hope, made me feel as though she still respected me in the morning so to speak. She even brought me peach pie. I'm not even going to pretend that I'm above fulfilling the old stereotype of there being a direct superhighway between my stomach and my heart. It really was a stroke of brilliance on Bennet's part- he knew exactly what he was doing. Offer me a slice of homemade peach pie and it's just as good as a valentine not to mention the sexual connotation, but that's an entirely different topic. Suffice it to say that you would notice that my smile would hold a little something more than strict gratitude. But at the end of the day, I was just a science fair project to her: an assignment that was probably the worst few days of her life to have to feign interest in a quiet nerd. I wanted so badly to believe it was true, but even then I detected the disingenuous smile that betrayed her. She got what was due her for her troubles.

Candice Wilmer was something else entirely. I was a project to her as well, but of a different sort. I think she rather liked the idea of playing house with me and she probably wished that I was more like the watchmaker she read about in my file. For a time I traded tuna fish sandwiches for scrambled eggs while she relished her role as nursemaid, but I had other plans. I was in a lot of pain at the time from all the surgeries I supposedly underwent, but I clearly remember being angry that I lost my abilities and confused as to where I was or why I was left in the care of someone who by all accounts had absolutely no medical training. It was hot, I was irritated, and she had the audacity to come on to me. She tried pique my interest with all manner of permutations, but the very idea that I would want to have sex with myself was breathtaking because in some form we all do- it's called masturbation and I don't need a stunt double for that. She was so filled with self-loathing and lacking in confidence that I actually did her a favor if you ask me.

Janice Parkman was a technicality. Believe me when I say that if it were just me, it would have been just about as much fun as Bingo night at the local retirement home, but it wasn't just me and that was the whole point. I did it solely to torture Matt for refusing to reunite me with my body and it worked perfectly. What could drive a man more insane than his wife not only sleeping with another man and enjoying it far more, and not being able to do anything about it? What was he going to do, kill himself to get back at me? As far as Janice was concerned, she never knew it was me and assumed her husband had suddenly brushed up on his technique, I guess. No harm, no foul. She was moaning alright, but it was all good.

I have only really used two women that didn't in some way deserve it be it directly or indirectly. Maya was one. She, like Candice, saw me for a wounded pigeon, a helpless, docile puppy who just needed some TLC. I did, but the difference was Maya did it out of genuine concern and humanitarian rationale while Candice did it because her puppet master told her to. Maybe there was an extra element of kink for her as well, but Maya didn't expect anything in return. Even if I hadn't told her that I knew Suresh, I think she would have helped me anyway because she thought it was the right thing to do. If I'm honest with myself, it was entirely my fault that things went as far as they did between us. I outright seduced her on purpose, killed her brother, and then her. I'll admit that I fully intended to rid myself of her bothersome twin because he was mucking up my plans, but I never planned on killing her. My original inclination was to ditch her once we got back to New York, but things didn't end up that way. I know that I can be incredibly persuasive at times, but really? I don't have the power of suggestion like Eden did, she could have seen me for what I was at any time, but she was blinded by her own perception of me as angelic and beyond reproach.

And then there was Claire. One could question my view of myself as a gentleman in that particular situation, but I was. I could have really terrorized her, made her beg for me to end it all (as if I could), but I didn't. I spoke softly and calmly to convey the certitude and inevitability of it all. I didn't want to hurt her, but I was going to get her ability one way or the other, there was no denying that. This may also come as a complete shock to those who despise me, but I allowed her to stab me in the chest with the knife. I saw it coming and I could have easily deflected it with my telekinesis, but I let her do it anyway. Why? To make her feel as though she still maintained some small measure of control, that although she knew what was in store that she could make me hurt too, that she could force me to share her fear and pain. It was a gamble and something of a race against the clock because with each tick, each drop of blood that spilled down my chest, each weakened heartbeat I came that much closer to death, yet I made myself go slow so as not to make it any worse on her than I had to. She may never know it, but I really was trying to be cognizant of her plight despite the urgency of my own. We have had several runs-ins since that time, me saving her life, her stabbing me in the eye with a pen, but through it all I have tried to keep something of a distance out of respect. The only time I may have breached the divide was briefly at the Stanton when I used Doyle's puppet power to control her like the petulant doll she was. Even then, I only wanted for her to hear me out. I had no intention of actually making her do anything she didn't want other than share a glass of wine.

The Stanton left me realizing that after all we have been through, Claire's hate for me runs deep and fast. Some will be hard to convince of my sincerity and others I could care less about, but the reality is that I will be stuck with both she and Peter for a very long time to come and I have to wonder exactly just how much of eternity she will spend glaring at me in contempt. At some point she has to forgive me, if I deserve such a thing, because ever her rage can't last forever.


	8. Thanks but No Thanks

**Thanks but No Thanks**

Dear Diary:

Some days it just doesn't pay to be a good guy. It's almost a daily occurrence that some jerk reminds me of why being bad worked so good and it's so hard for me not to backslide into my old ways. It's hard enough for me to walk the straight and narrow as it is without being surrounded by temptation and nearly consumed by the urge to deal some incompetent, narcissistic tool some sweet homemade karma.

Maybe I'm just getting crotchety in my old age, but I never used to be this way. I was always fairly mild-mannered, never given to fits of rage or even overt outward expressions of displeasure. I learned pretty early on that being so open about how I felt wasn't exactly welcome with each argument my mother instigated with wild accusations and pursed lips. It was usually over the most asinine things, which only made it that much more difficult not to inappropriately laugh at the absurdity of it all during the thick of it. No matter how special she thought I was, she surely would have had me locked up as insane for that. It was just easier to swallow all of the frustration, discontent, and boredom much as one would choke down a spoonful of castor oil, except I couldn't even make faces. Virginia may have meant well, but I'm certain I would have fallen off the turnip truck for real if I didn't move out when I did.

Once on my own I felt calmer, more relaxed in the solitude of my own apartment surrounded by books. Some people take long, foamy baths, some meditate, I read. There's just something so intimate in being a voyeur in another's world without actually having to interact with anyone. It was an opportunity for me to travel to different times and places before I knew that such a thing was an actual possibility. It fed my need to understand and it helped me through the dullest of days. No matter how slow my job was, or how lonely I may have been late on a Saturday night, I could always learn something new because the possibilities were endless. Other people's hang-ups, ineptitude and foibles were really of no concern to me because I was in my own little world of Zen. I wasn't entirely happy with my lot in life, but I was settled on living it out fixing watches like a monk toiling over manuscripts in his cloister. That was, until I read a book that literally changed my life and realized that I was not destined to be one of the masses, a nameless sheep in the herd. I didn't know it then, but I was meant to be the big bad wolf.

After I came to accept that my gift was both a blessing and a curse, I embraced my drive to be something more, something better with a ferocity and single-minded purpose that lit the fuse. Even now, I would never say that I was in any way impulsive or out of control, although I'm sure others may have a different interpretation or set of standards on the matter. In fact, I think that I put up with a lot of needless stupidity with a level of grace that approached sainthood. How many times did Bennet empty the clip of his gun into me knowing full well that it wouldn't do anything but annoy me and ruin my clothes? How many times did people try to outsmart me with their little lies and schemes while I rolled my eyes in boredom? Don't even get me started on Mohinder's litany of downfalls, but it seems as though he never learns and what he lacks in competency he makes up for in persistence I guess. The point is, I am surrounded by children and I don't make a very good babysitter. The deck is almost entirely stacked against me and although I am a patient man, I will not gladly abide the incompetence of others forever. I have become accustomed to swift, precise, and definitive action. I move through the world like a gamma knife, slicing my way through red tape and all manner of obstacles that impede others. It's pretty hard to just turn your back on such ruthless efficiency, but that's what I am expected to do if I want to be a part of the club. If I don't live like an ordinary citizen, my sparkly white spandex superhero uniform will be confiscated, or so I'm told.

So why do I do it? Why would I trade a life of certain survival and superiority for one of servitude to my fellow man? Why do I want to be part of the Super Secret Hero Club so bad? It's not for the pay or the camaraderie, I'll tell you that. I've made my feelings on Mohinder and Bennet plain enough, Claire would no doubt love to watch me die writhing in my own blood with a stake through my eye if she could, Parkman would like to be the one to stab me in the first place, I get the feeling that Hiro and his buddy look at me as though I'm the last fat girl at the bar at closing time, and Peter only tolerates me…well, because he's Peter. Still, it's pretty clear that he is resigned to the fact that I'm around much like one just lives with a bad case of shingles. It's irritating and at times painful, but there's really no alternative.

Given the way everyone views me, the easy way out would be to just simply agree that I am a monster and behave even worse than they expect of me. But I'm not the simple hedonist they believe me to be and I take their ambivalence as a challenge. As JFK said of the space race, I do it not because it's easy, I do it because it's hard. I have always loved a challenge be it restoring and mind bogglingly complex timepiece, or fighting an uphill battle. I fought my way out of anonymity and mediocrity quite well, but that battle has been won. I don't think there's anyone who can say I didn't apply myself fully to that particular endeavor. Logic would dictate that if I tried with equal vigor to turn my life around, that I should be met with equal success, but the jury is still out in that count.

Aside from the personal gratification that winning the covert PR campaign would bring me, and by default an end to the constant looking over my shoulder, is what lie at my very core: my self-concept. I might have done bad things, but that does not de facto make me a bad person. I am no different from anyone else in that I want my life to matter, for people to at least once in awhile look at me without the urge to run, scream, or attempt to kill me. I'm not delusional. I'll never be anything approaching Peter the Great and Merciful, but I'd settle for just being the guy in line at the grocery store who lets you cut in if you only have an item or two, or the person on the street that jogs to catch up to you to return the wallet you dropped on the sidewalk. Never mind that I more or less have all the time in the world to wait in lines (believe me, that thought doesn't thrill me in the least), or the fact that I have ways of obtaining money other than working for it, no one else has to know that to appreciate the small gesture. I want people to appreciate me for what I do, not hate me for what I've done. Relationships are messy and tangled so I prefer to avoid them in favor of a life of simple solitude, but it doesn't mean that I don't want people to thank me for the things I do. Even a genuine smile would be payment enough if I give up my seat on the subway or a nod for holding the door open. These are small courtesies that all too often go unnoticed. I'm not out to save the world, but would it really kill people to acknowledge anything short of averting global disaster?

I am, at my very center, basically a decent person who has simply grown jaded and weary of being the bad guy. I just want others to treat me like a human with feelings rather than a ruthless machine. I want them to see my life as equally valuable to theirs and not in some way expendable. When I am hurt, I want them to be at least mildly concerned instead of wondering how they can capitalize on the moment. I want them to see my powers as potentially beneficial rather than detrimental. I want them to value my ability for logic and analysis and moreover trust me on matters of strategy. I want these things, but more importantly I want to work for them because I know that forgiveness never comes cheap or easy. I know I have to prove my worth and pull my weight to show them that I am more than just the evil boogeyman waiting to slice their heads open the minute the fancy strikes. I can control my impulses, strong as they are, and I can be reliable and trustworthy, but I can't do these things if they don't give me a chance. That's why it is so important to me to continue to be patient, to take opportunities when they are presented, and to be understanding when it is too hard for them to thank me for it.


	9. The Smartest Guy in the Room

**A/N: Thanks to Mlle. Verity for reminding me to inform all of my faithful readers of one thing: in all my stories Peter always has all of his powers. It has always been this way and always will because after all this time, I just can't accept it any other way. Because I said so *sticks out tongue* and I'm taking my ball and going home, NBC. **

**Chapter 9- The Smartest Guy in the Room**

Even though my time as Sylar the Serial Killer was dark and just a little twisted, it wasn't all for naught. If nothing else, I learned to appreciate my own abilities and hone my IA to a point sharper than a scalpel. I learned to trust my instinct and embrace the inevitable flow of evolution. But it also gave me confidence. Not in the megalomaniacal sense that Bennet would assume, although I'm sure it appeared that way to many, but more in the self assured form. In fact, Bennet wouldn't even use a word like "megalomaniacal" in casual conversation, but I do it all the time. I have no reason to hide the fact that my brain works faster than the average person's even if it means they have to get a dictionary to figure out what I just said. I came to accept that I had something that others didn't, and as they say- admitting it is the first step.

I knew pretty early on that I wasn't like others for various reasons, not least of which was the ease with which I could learn and make associations. My IA is something like a chicken and egg conundrum because it wasn't like I just woke up one day and could fly or snap my fingers and make things disappear. I don't know when my ability manifested exactly because as near as I can tell, it's an extension of my own natural inclinations. It's taken some work to arrive at this conclusion, but it all begins at one of my earliest memories: the day my mother died. I remember it well: far better than a 5 year old should have and looking back, it's a pretty good indication that I was probably just a little smarter than the average preschooler. I can safely say that my IA wasn't yet evident at that point because although my brain faithfully cataloged the event, it simply couldn't make sense of it. I didn't know that death was forever or the gravity of what my father had done. I didn't understand why I left with strange people who told me they were my parents now. All I knew was that I had just witnessed violations of two of the basic rules I had been taught: don't hit others and don't talk to strangers. I couldn't draw any correlations on my own other than to know it was some looming omen of badness no matter how many milkshakes my new mother offered me to get me to trust her.

School was about what one would imagine- me sitting entirely by myself reading or building complex cranes and simple machines out of erector sets while my classmates slept, ran around the room, or cried. Technically I received good grades, but I did get low marks in what I would consider extraneous things like "plays well with others" although my general conduct was always good. Teachers always gushed to Virginia about how I was such an angel (I wish it was nothing but a poor pun) and I never caused trouble, but I just couldn't seem to want to play with the other kids. They were right: I didn't. It was painfully clear to me by the 4th grade that my always knowing the answer had repercussions: it made the others look bad and they didn't appreciate it. So, I learned to be somewhat ashamed of being smart and kept to myself from that point on. Again, my IA wasn't available or else I would have understood that learning didn't come as naturally as breathing to everyone else.

With junior high and high school, the alienation became progressively worse and somewhere around my sophomore year I was officially branded a nerd and banished from the island of social elites. All shouldn't have been lost because the nerds all hang together, right? No. To be precise, they did, but I was too nerdy even for them because being king of the geeks meant reading comic books, jerking off to pictures of Princess Leah in her gold wire bikini, and endless arguments over whether or not Star Wars could ever successfully take over the Federation of Planets in Star Trek in a hypothetical battle royal. I wasn't cool because the only interest I had in any of it went no further than wondering if I could actually build a tricorder and make it work. I may have been good at math and science, but I wasn't going to be the guy dressed like a Storm Trooper at Comic Con and everyone knew it. I was voted most likely to become a basement dwelling IT guy though, and this was about the time that I started noticing a trend: I wasn't cool enough to speak to in the hallway, but it didn't stop everyone and the quarterback from asking me the answers to homework. Sometimes I helped them and sometimes I didn't, but I began to realize that I had something no one else did and it gave me an advantage. Doormat as I was at the time, I didn't capitalize on it for maximum gain. It would have been interesting to see exactly how much my time was worth to them.

I was 19 when the magic moment happened, and although I can't say for sure that it was the exact moment that my ability became fully realized, it was definitely a light bulb moment of epic proportion. Sitting at Martin's old workbench, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life, I picked up an old watch and pried the lid off just to look at the insides. I never really tinkered with timepieces before, but I was no stranger to fixing things. Virginia had come to rely on me to fix broken toasters, glitchy TV's, and anything else that she felt hadn't lived well beyond it's lifetime. She was so impressed with my skills, she pimped me out to others in her building like a day laborer, which might not have been so bad if my customers weren't usually retirees who paid me in long and boring stories of yore while I worked. Most of the objects I worked on were older than I was. But sitting at the bench, it was as if suddenly everything just made sense and I knew exactly how everything fit together to make the watch run. I put the watch down, and wondered if I had gone insane. Even I knew I had no business just having access to information like that out of the blue. I genuinely thought I had lost my mind- the one thing that had been my only strength. I didn't tell anyone what happened, not one living soul, but I did make use of it and reopened the family shop. I didn't know what this new thing was, but it was making me money and it wasn't like I was hearing voices or seeing the Virgin Mary's face in the sandwich I packed for lunch. That was good enough for me.

It was futile, of course, because Bennett found out about my little trick but even so, I usually had the upper hand in the grand scheme of things. It did involve a bit of a learning curve to figure him and everyone else out, but overall I'd say that they all caught on to what I had been reluctant to admit to myself: I was the smartest guy in the room and they had good reason to be afraid of me. It wasn't that I had a Pandora's box of misery I could unleash via a dizzying array of powers that had them on edge- it was the creative way that I could use them that scared the daylights out of them. Peter too can build an arsenal of abilities, but people don't run away from him screaming because everyone knows that he simply can't elucidate the full scope of capabilities the way I can. He wouldn't use the word "elucidate" either.

Anyway, the point is that I became comfortable with my intellect. I had always been intelligent, but was too shy to show it beyond my solitary occupation. Finally, I felt as though I could breathe deeply and be recognized for my full potential, to apply my skill to pursuing perfection. Nerds do indeed run the world and I nearly became the king of them all, I was just a handshake away. Perhaps Peter is smarter than I give him credit for, but it was him who asked me to save his girlfriend and by extension, millions. Once more, it was the popular kid in school having to quietly ask the dork for help on his homework. And once again, I did it without capitalizing on his emotions, which at that time would have been even easier than it was at Kirby Plaza. If Peter's all about martyrdom he's even more head over heels for the whole damsel in distress meme, but it wasn't like I didn't have my own motivation for agreeing. In that instance, if I didn't do the work, we'd both fail the assignment in terms of millions dead and being stuck with one another for infinity in my head. That's not just failure, it would have been the very definition of epic fail.

Even now I see it in their eyes. They want to discount me as insane or cursed or whatever- but they can't. They can't afford to because they know it as well as I- there will come a time when I and only I can be the key to what they need. They still fear my ability to slice through the thickest of lies with ruthless efficiency. They loathe it now, but just like Peter they will come to appreciate the usefulness of my prowess when their backs are against the wall and it is my careful thought and intellect that saves the day. But I'm not the painfully shy schoolboy I used to be. Things have changed and my expertise has it's price. The question is, how much will it be worth to them?


	10. Last Man Standing

**Chapter 10- Last Man Standing**

Ok, I admit it: I got sucked into the hype and coughed up $10 for a ticket to see "Hunger Games" along with every other teen in the Metro area and as I watched the mayhem unfold on the screen, it made me wonder what I would do if I were in that situation. If it all came down to it and specials were rounded up for such a game, would I wantonly kill my cohort for the entertainment of the viewers at home? Would I even survive?

There are ultimately two sides to extreme survival: the physical and the psychological. One might think that with all of my abilities, I should be able to just kill everyone the second the game began. That might be true in principle, but nothing galvanizes people like a sure threat and you can bet that I would have a big red target painted on my back from the word go. In a hypothetical world in which I was thrown into an arena with Peter, Parkman, Claire, Hiro, and even Nathan if he were alive, I'm not so sure I would be the odds on bet. Let's ignore for a moment the fact that Hiro could just say to hell with it and teleport himself to a nice beach somewhere while the rest of us duke it out, or the futility of trying to kill Claire when she can't die. I wouldn't be immune to their collective attack and I wouldn't get a moment's rest always wondering if one of them was just around the corner with a sharp knife to saw my head off. They might not know where my kill spot is, but it would only take a few well placed cuts to ensure my death no matter where it is.

Peter isn't known to be the type to take another's life, but I have been on the receiving end of his wrath enough to know that if it absolutely came down to it, he could kill me. If he thought there was no alternative but to take my life to save his own or that of someone he loved, I would undoubtedly take my last breath at his hands. After all, he was going to take me out at Kirby Plaza, I truly believe that. I remember the look of determination in his eye as if it were yesterday and if he had to murder me he would. He might feel guilty about it, but he would do it just the same and just like me, he could do it in an astounding number of ways: even taking one of my own powers like disintegration to use against me. There really is no such thing as having an advantage when you have an empath that can copy your ability at will in proximity.

Hiro has the unfair advantage of being able to freeze time and he almost gave me a Cuban necktie in my own mother's apartment once. It was the scariest thing in the world to have a razor sharp sword held to my throat when all I could move was my eyes and watch him swing. Lucky for me he hesitated and the spell was broken or else things could have ended very differently- for better or worse. The world wouldn't have known Sylar, but then again, many more would have died because I didn't stop Sullivan. But he isn't quite the same mousy man he used to be and just like Peter, if his honor was at stake, I'd be several inches shorter.

Parkman too has plenty of motivation to make me a target and a means to get the job done. Even though he doesn't like to use it and may not even be fully aware of the extent of his own ability, he more or less has the power of mind control and that could be very dangerous for me. Aside from my ability to detect lies, I really have no defense against that kind of attack and he's monkeyed with my mind on more than one occasion. He can place thoughts into people's minds and this gives him the option to control me like a puppet all while making me think it was my own idea. He could either make me make a mistake that would render me vulnerable or he could make me kill myself. Parkman may not want to think that he's capable of such a thing, but I know from being a resident of his brain from a time that for him it wouldn't take much persuasion because he hates me anyway. I have been the source of so much misery in his life from killing a man and framing him to having sex with his wife, so if I took myself out he wouldn't feel too badly about it.

Claire would be especially daunting because in order to be assured of her death, I would have to be thorough. I know roughly where her kill spot is, but either I would have to bludgeon her to a pulp, entirely disintegrate her, or something equally horrific and I simply wouldn't have it in me. I've never brutalized anyone like that and for good reason. But anything less and I would be faced with a constantly resurrecting enemy that just keeps coming at me like a determined zombie. She wouldn't physically be a threat, but she certainly would wear me down with her persistence.

Nathan wouldn't be a physical threat because all he could really do is fly away, but he was far more deadly with the legendary Petrelli weapon of manipulation. Of them all, he was probably the only one that was capable of full on intellectual assassination and the only one I would consider my equal in that domain. Nathan's strength would be his ability to lead the others in a pack to hunt me like dogs after a fox. He would be the architect of my demise because he certainly wouldn't ally with me even if it meant sacrificing himself as he did at Kirby Plaza and again on the roof of the hospital, although I think that had more to do with his realizing that he was living as a guest in my head and that to him, it wasn't really living at all. I respect that because if I was faced with the prospect of living in Matt's head forever, I would have killed myself too. I didn't even want to live in my own head for crying out loud.

But then there's the psychological aspect of survival and although I can deal with isolation, surviving in the elements with only basic supplies and being hunted would be enough to demoralize anyone and test their mettle. I faced a version of this myself thanks to Matt, but true survival is another story entirely. None of my powers would be particularly helpful: I can't conjure water, snap my fingers for shelter, or create my own food. Telekinesis would be minimally helpful for these things, but I wouldn't be much better off than anyone else with the exception of not being able to die of exposure or starvation if I don't procure them. It certainly wouldn't be a comfortable existence and in some ways even worse because the suffering of hunger and cold would never end.

So really, my only option would be to kill my fellow participants to end the game or get the supplies I need. But would I just so the folks at home could forget about how miserable their lives were for an hour or so? Could I really bash Claire's skull in with a rock? Would I engage in an epic battle with Peter to gain ratings and hopefully support from sponsors? Surprisingly, no. I would flat out refuse from the start to kill anyone no matter how much suffering that meant for me and it has nothing to do with morality. It simply isn't logical and I have no reason to kill them. I already have Claire's ability and most of Peter's, Nathan's wasn't really useful to me, and Matt's is interesting but not enough to kill him for. Hiro's ability to teleport would be the only power I would love to add to my arsenal, but the painful truth is that I simply can't catch him to get it. To put me in the arena would be a grand misunderstanding of my motivations by the promoters because I don't kill because I like to, I do it to gain abilities. Without the motivation to gain powers, I have no more inclination to take another's life, in turn removing the urge for the others to protect themselves.

It would be a ratings nightmare because the only action on view would be us sitting in a circle staring at one another. Perhaps I could juggle a few apples for the camera, but that's as far as I would personally go. Cooperation is not exactly my forte, but it is the only logical path to share survival skills and it would satisfy my contrary nature. You want me to perform like a circus animal for your amusement? Ask Bennet and Elle how that turned out. I don't perform for anyone and I don't kill for entertainment- mine or anyone else's.


	11. Sleepless

**A/N: I'm soooooo not busy today….**

**Chapter 11- Sleepless**

Dear Diary:

It's 3:17am and I can't sleep again. I'm all alone in my apartment and for once in my life I wish I wasn't. Just once it would be nice to have someone who doesn't mind that I woke them up because I was having another nightmare. Maybe they could wake me up too and remove me from my own personal hell. Maybe they could look at me with sympathetic eyes, gently rub my back, and whisper soft encouragement to break up the gloom of the darkness until I fell asleep again. It would be nice, but I don't have that. All I have is this journal and that's pretty damn impersonal, but it's better than nothing. Better than doing what I usually do: just pretend that nothing's wrong. At least I can get it out, and isn't talking about it supposed to make you feel better?

A person can't live a life like I have and not suffer the consequences. I think that people incorrectly assume that I'm some kind of machine, that I don't feel anything- not one shred of empathy and it's simply not true. It can't be or else I wouldn't be able to replicate abilities the way Peter does. It's how I gained Elle's electricity and I felt every bit of it, trust me. I also felt Claire's fear and loathing for me while I pulled her back from the abyss of Canfield's vortex. If I wasn't capable of knowing those things for myself, it would have just been a jumble of incomprehensible sensations and it would have been easy for me to discount them as such. But I do know what feelings are and although I'm pretty good at hiding it, Gabriel isn't entirely dead. He never was.

I might look like I'm all business when I take someone's ability, and I am, but that's not the whole story. It's…complicated. It's true that I don't feel remorse per se because I am exercising my imperative to become better, greater. People don't castigate baseball players for spending hours throwing pitches to become faster or more accurate, but I don't exactly get the same benefit of the doubt- probably because baseball players don't use fan's heads for target practice, but whatever. The point is, it has to be and that's that. But alongside this dwells the other side of me that realizes as my victim struggles, cries, and bleeds, that they are just that- my victim. They are suffering directly because of my action. I am inflicting pain and torment on another living being and they will lose their life because of me. That's what I see at night when I try to sleep.

I have watched the light fade from so many eyes, heard the pleas for mercy, and washed my hands of so much blood it's simply incomprehensible to the average person. It's not like I am criminally insane and therefore not responsible for my actions. My deeds were deliberate, well planned, and executed in a full state of cognizance. Still, I look back now at the trail of devastation and broken lives I've left in my wake and even I am horrified. I never wanted this. Hands that used to fix broken things now become tools of destruction. In the beginning, I was wracked with guilt and spent hours begging for mercy from higher beings, confessing my sins over and over on the walls, but I realized that I was damned and no one could save me. I couldn't even save myself. I still feel that way now, knowing that although I can control the hunger a little better, there is no such thing as mastering it. No matter how good I try to be, I will always be damaged goods and there's nothing I can do about it. I will always be the devil in disguise, the wolf in sheep's clothing. Forever a Judas.

Pair this ever present conflict of interest with what has been done to me in retaliation and it's a wonder I can sleep at all. Even psychopaths have feelings when it comes to themselves and while they may hold people and garden hoses in the same regard, strap them to a table and you have their full and undivided attention. If it's true of psychopaths, it's even more true for me because I do understand emotions in others. The physical pain I endured in Level 5 was mind blowingly traumatic, but it was made all the worse by knowing for a fact that Bennet took personal pleasure in watching me suffer out of some twisted sense of justice. It went beyond his job description, it even went beyond his paternal instinct to protect his daughter. There was something even more self-righteous in his cold blue eyes. He felt vindicated, justified in dealing his own vengeance as though he had absolutely no culpability in making me what I was. Every drop of my blood that spilled onto the floor and every moment that I was conscious enough to want to die was pure bliss to him.

Sometimes in my dreams I am back in Level 5, tied to a table, staring at my own reflection in that damned huge window where who knows how many people watched me sweat, bleed, vomit, pass out and die only to be bought back to do it all again. It was surely a snuff situation for the ages. I am tied to the table so tight I can't move and I'm surrounded by trays of medical instruments and machines that measure every aspect of my being. My powers never work and I feel defenseless. I'm usually covered in blood and know I'm seriously hurt, but thankfully I never feel anything. I can't feel how cold the room is either, although I know it is. I also know that I have to escape because the only thing I do feel is a crushing sense of dread bordering on panic and I struggle to work free, but I never can. I know that any minute, Bennet will come back. He'll saunter in, slowly circle my bed while he admires his handiwork, and finally he'll bend over me, blocking out the bright light overhead. His eyes will lighten just a little behind the dark framed glasses and he'll give me that cold smile of his before he holds up a shiny scalpel, turning it so it flashes in the light. I don't know exactly what he's going to do, but I know it will be bad and I usually wake up screaming. As I try to stop shaking in the darkness of my room, I have to remind myself that I can't actually die of a heart attack despite the frantic pounding in my chest, but I can't tell myself that it was just a dream. It really did happen.

In her own way, Claire unknowingly exacts revenge almost every night by the ability I took from her. Sometimes the nightly terror goes on for days, leaving me fatigued and a nervous wreck from lack of sleep and fear. During these times, I would gladly eat a bottle of sleeping pills or drink myself into a coma just to get some rest and avoid the menace that awaits me, but thanks to regeneration, these things offer no peace. The only thing I can do is read to quiet my mind and try to crowd out the violent images enough to drift off for even just a few minutes. The only viable option available to me is to ask Parkman to erase the memories from my mind like editing a movie reel, but the last time I asked for his help he gave me a fresh batch of misery to nearly drown in. There simply isn't anyone I could trust to help me, and I wouldn't know how to even begin asking because all that profess to know me would tell me that I deserve my torment. My nightmares are my scarlet letter- a lasting testament to my sins. No one would offer me absolution even if they could because they wouldn't want me to miss out on any comeuppance or karma. In their own way, they all want to see me suffer too.

I do know what feelings are and I do experience them- sometimes more strongly than is helpful. But I don't have anyone to tell me it's going to be ok, to give me something to reach out to in the darkness, to quell the fear, erase the pain, and make the bad dreams go away. I am all alone in the shadows with the ghosts of my past and no one knows. All they see is my blank stare, my vacant, hollow eyes that are the windows to my soul. They take the darkness they see as ill intent, never considering that the eyes can also be mirrors that reflect the feelings they won't acknowledge. They take it as pathology and it is, just not the kind they could have imagined.


	12. Vogue

**Chapter 12- Vogue**

In our celebrity obsessed culture, beauty is debated, dissected, and traded almost like currency. In fact, you can buy a thinner nose, bigger breasts, or even a shapelier ass if you want it. You can change your hair and eye color, paint your body various shades of bronze, and have all the hair on your body pulled out by the roots by a bored looking Ukrainian girl if that's your thing. You can buy a better you for the benefit of others. It's almost your civic duty to do these things just so your neighbors won't have to sit across from your ugly mug on the train during their commute. Like anyone, I like looking at pretty things too, but I guess I'm just not as enraptured with the notion as everyone else. Beauty is where you find it and I have to say I'm not real sure what people see in me because I'm 100% all natural, unbronzed, fully folicled, and refuse to go to a gym and sweat with total strangers in tight clothing for anyone else.

I guess I've always been a modest person and I can thank my mother for that. For all her estimation of how smart I was, she never told me I was the most handsome boy on the block. Polite, yes, but not destined to be People's Sexiest Man of the Year…however that decision is made. She didn't tell me I was ugly either, so I guess I just took her ambivalence for what it was and ever since then I saw myself as average in that particular arena. I pretty much received the same reaction from almost everyone else, so I didn't spend much time comparing the merits of hair product with random people in line at the grocery store. I will admit that I might not have paid as much attention to my appearance as maybe I should have, but I guess I just never realized that by the time Suresh found me, the 90's had ended and khakis and sweater vests had fallen out of fashion. When you spend your time hunched over a workbench going blind over tiny parts, you don't really have much incentive to look up to see what people out on the street are wearing.

But a curious thing happened after I took a chance and tried something new. One day I decided to wear clothing that was a little more fitted, stylish, and black. This was, of course, after I escaped from Level 5. I found that black was excellent at hiding blood stains and it had the added effect of making me look slimmer, although that's something I've never had to worry about. As for my hairstyle, that's one thing that I can thank Bennet for. To this day I still can't understand why he shaved my hair off. It could have been to make cramming a cannula port into my skull easier, or for sanitary purposes so I wouldn't get lice or whatnot, but my best guess was it was just one more form of humiliation he could inflict on me. At any rate, as it grew out I had to do something and it was a chance glance in the mirror after I got out of the shower one day that gave me courage to try something other than the standard part down the side. After I dried my short hair with a nice fluffy towel, I realized that it didn't look half bad all sticking up in so many directions. A little more experimentation and I came to the conclusion that while glasses were ok, the overall look was better without them. Besides, my metamorphosis had a very pragmatic application. There was a murder warrant out for my arrest and I had to look as different from Gabriel as I could if I wanted to avoid getting captured. At the time I didn't know if Bennet was part of some unofficial government group that monitored specials, but I had come to the firm conclusion that I didn't want to tangle with him again if I could help it. I managed to outsmart him once, but even then I knew that he wouldn't be so easy to shake the next time.

In the beginning I felt absolutely ridiculous and incredibly self-conscious. I felt naked without my glasses and in some way I had grown used to them creating a protective barrier between me and other people. Without them, I had to face strangers head-on, and that was a terrifying prospect considering I didn't know who might be looking to execute that warrant. I remained quiet, kept to myself, and only glanced furtively at people I passed on the street until I could assure myself that they weren't a threat. But in those brief glances, I noticed something: women in particular spent a lot longer looking at me than they used to. A few even gave bashful smiles at being caught, and an even smaller number flirtatiously dared me to do anything about it. Without doing anything but changing my clothes and neglecting to comb my hair, I became a chick magnet and I was baffled. I can't say I was exactly the same person I always was, but as far as anyone else could tell I was still the withdrawn, bookish, silent type that I had always been. I just went shopping at Hugo Boss rather than the Gap. Apparently clothes do make the man.

When I finally got up the courage to maintain eye contact for a few seconds, I was surprised by how friendly women were to me. Not that they were really openly rude to me before, but I was more or less invisible to them despite holding open doors and letting them off elevators first. Not only did they notice me, but their tone held the expectation of something a lot more personal than basic manners and I'm not a prude, but some were very unambiguous about it, leaving me to wonder if I was supposed to leave a wad of cash on the dresser afterwards. It was quite an experience for me to realize that the usual game of hide and seek was, at least partially in my case, turned upside down with women being the hunters and I their prey. Partly due to my own inexperience and being distracted by new drives a little stronger than sex, I usually didn't take the bait and that's how I learned that the laws of physics apply to relationships as well as everything around us. When I just gave them a coy smile and went on my way, it drove them nuts. Whatever they saw in me that made them want me blazed like throwing gasoline on a fire if I played hard to get.

And so with practice, both in giving and withholding, I learned how to use my sexuality as a tool much like I would any of my abilities. I usually just played along with bashful smiles and a twinkle of my eye, but if I did decide that it would be worth my while in some way, I made it worth theirs as well. It was the least I could do. Maya was the first time I ever fully applied myself in that pursuit and I have to say it worked pretty well. Why a sweaty stranger laying in the middle of a dirt road was appealing to her I'll never know, but I had to play the hand that I was dealt and that meant prostituting myself. Strictly speaking, it wasn't exactly manwhoring because she didn't pay me, but it was in exchange for services in the form of getting me back to New York even if she didn't realize it at the time. The next morning was something out of a comedy of horrors as I quietly snuck out of her bed to go hide her brother's body before she woke up. Not only did I feel just a little dirty for pimping myself, I had to go stuff a body under the bed before breakfast and I do not make a habit of touching people after I kill them.

But even after all that, I still don't understand what it is about me that reels them in. I wouldn't consider myself extraordinarily handsome, I am perhaps a little too thin in proportion to my height, and the eyebrows… I have no idea where those came from because even Samson's weren't quite that expansive. I admit that I do have to pay a bored looking Ukrainian girl to manage those as well as wax my chest, but I don't do it for anyone else's benefit. I'm afraid that if I don't, my eyebrows will get so bushy I won't be able to see and during the summer a hairy chest is a sweaty chest. It's a hygiene thing.

Physically, there's nothing special about me but I'm guessing that's not really what the point of attraction is about. People can decipher intent as well as they can appreciate beauty and what people see, what they react to when they see me across the room, is Gabriel. More precisely, they are drawn to me when they think I'm harmless, charming, and intelligent. Intelligence is a desirable attribute- so long as the person possessing it isn't bent on finding a way to kill you and that's Gabriel. It's also desirable so long as the bearer doesn't use it to memorize the titles of every Battlestar Galactica episode and that is Sylar. Gabriel is the kind of guy you know will be faithful to you and the person you want to bring home to your mother, while Sylar is the boyfriend you have waiting for you in the back alley. It's a fine line to walk in balancing the meek, approachable Gabriel side with the quick witted, sharp Sylar side, but that's a craft I'm still learning. I can say from experience that either in the extreme is not workable, so the truth must lie somewhere in the middle. I just haven't found it yet.

Would I look better if I got pec implants, spray painted a nice golden tan, or lightened my hair a few shades? Maybe, but I don't care. While the guy next to me might look at me and wonder why I obviously don't go to a gym, take supplements, or even seem to worry about my five o'clock shadow, I'm looking at him and his thinning hair, perfectly bleached teeth that will fall out eventually, and the pills he relies on to get an erection and wonders why he even bothers. I might not be the best looking guy on the bus. Ford Modeling agency will never call me to pose for the cover of a popular magazine, and I will not be the next spokesman for Weight Watchers. But I'm ok with that because I am happy with myself and everyone else should be too.

I can say with some measure of authority that for most people life is too short to obsess over fleeting standards of beauty that change over time anyway. Thin wasn't always in, and some thought abnormally small feet and elongated skulls were all the rage. To fight the flow of time is the very definition of insanity and to waste so much time and effort in the pursuit of perfection is shallow. A slightly crooked nose can add character to a face as can imperfections, and bodies of all shapes and sizes. I might look better if I changed any number of things, but I'll keep most of my hair- including the eyebrows- no matter what anyone else thinks.


	13. Commiseration

**Chapter 13- Commiseration **

Dear Diary:

There hasn't been anyone quite like me, at least that I've met. Looking back on my life, I can't really remember anyone who ever really got me. Am I really that much of a mystery, so different as to be something else entirely? I might say I am almost quite literally a different species now, but I haven't always been and it's inconceivable to me that not one other living being could relate to me in some basic way. If they had, things might have been very different.

I would have thought that from the very beginning, Samson might have looked at me as an infant and there would have been at least some shred of recognition that I was a part of him. But I have no warm memories of fishing trips, playing catch, or anything of the like- just an uneasy sense of fear and apprehension as if at any second something could have gone terribly wrong as it did in the parking lot of the diner. Surely he understood that there was a good chance that I could have inherited an ability from him and that alone should have connected us. Maybe he did see it. Maybe he knew all too well what was to come and that's why he sold me. When I first learned of being traded like damaged goods at a flea market, I thought he did it because he didn't feel anything for me perhaps except contempt for my very existence. I probably just slowed him down, encumbered his drive to gain more abilities. But since then I have come to the realization that he might have rid himself of me because either he knew he would be tempted to kill me if I did manifest a power, or he knew that I would be competition for him should I end up with IA. Of course, I did inherit IA, but painful at it was and still is, I'm glad I did not travel that particular road because I am sure he would have killed me. I might have been smart, but even so I would have been no match for his abilities and I wouldn't have had any way of defending myself. My life would have certainly ended before my 25th birthday.

Virginia had her own warped perception of who I was. She steadfastly espoused her own delusions that I was meant to be an investment banker, or an astronaut, or the president. Her view of me was no more accurate than the twisted image of the distorted funhouse mirrors in Sullivan's carnival, but I tried to be as close to her vision as I could in an effort to please her. I knew her fantasy didn't match my reality, but she was all I had. Martin left years before, I had no real friends to speak of at school, and forget a girlfriend. I was missing these things not because I wanted to be a loner, people just couldn't see past my shyness and I had lost all motivation to try to break free of it. I had learned by that time that relationships were temporary and usually ended in bitter disappointment anyway. But not Virginia. She loved me even if she didn't think I was trying hard enough to be the youngest CEO the city had ever seen. She loved me, but it was unhealthy, unbalanced, and laden with more guilt and frustration than a confessional booth at the local diocese on a Saturday night. She adored me in her own pathological way until I showed her my ability. I thought it would make me special just the way she wanted for me, but she cursed me, told me I was possessed by a devil, and disowned me. As I sat slumped up against her bedroom door, my heart ached almost as much as it did watching my own mother die. I thought she loved me, but I found myself utterly alone and shunned. Not one person on the earth cared about me in any capacity.

When I think about it now, I have to wonder if she didn't know that day was coming. Checked out as she was, surely she would have known the things her brother-in-law did. Even if she never watched him kill anyone, surely she would have witnessed him levitate something or use another ability. She would have overheard musings either by my mother or Martin himself. Didn't she realize that I might have been tainted with the same curse before she took me in? But knowing her, she would have just blithely dismissed it because it didn't fit in the bright little world she created in her mind- a world I destroyed with my own hands.

People who have professed to know me, people like Arthur and Angela, Bennett, Elle, Sullivan- they all had one thing in common: they understood me only insofar as they needed to in order to use me for their little schemes. They might have understood aspects of me, but each plot failed in one way or another because they didn't see me in my entirety. Their failure was due to incompetence, willful blindness, or by my own design because I saw their game for what it was but played along just to toy with them. Each chose a time in my life when I was vulnerable- in need of love, an identity, a sense of normalcy, or just humane social contact- to try and stab me through the heart when it would hurt the most. It has never been easy for me to let people get close for fear of abandonment, rejection, or manipulation, but my experience has taught me that although it might be desperately lonely, hanging back in the shadows and staying aloof is a much safer place to be.

Still, I have to say that for the brief time I thought that I was a Petrelli, I thought for once I had finally found the acceptance I craved. Angela and Arthur didn't want me to change, to be anything else than what I was- or so I thought. What they wanted was an assassin, a murderer who they controlled with silk stings and promises of belonging if only I did their bidding. It felt odd for me to call them my parents, but it felt good too. It felt right, and that's why I fell for it. For once I made the fundamental error of listening to my heart when my mind was telling me the whole time it was all so wrong. I didn't really need my lie detecting ability to know it was all a ruse. Something in Arthur's words rang hollow when I asked him if he was my father and although I already knew the answer, it still sent a pang through my heart when all that I had hoped for turned to dust.

Of anyone, the only person that I can ever say really understood what it is like to be me is Peter. I can't say with degree of certainty what Nathan may have understood of me for the time we shared cortical real estate. I know I had access to his memories, but I don't know if he could see mine as well or what he might have felt about them, but Peter was for a time in my shoes and it had nothing to do with his empathetic ability. I think that in some way he always sort of understood that there was a little more to me than everyone else could see, but while he had my IA, he got a front row seat at being me- and he hated it. He didn't really like it when I referred to him as my brother, but he came to terms with it fairly quickly and it meant a lot to me. He wasn't ready to have a family photo taken, but he was at least willing to give me a chance even if it was a little grudgingly. I think he only acquiesced because he thought I could help him control the incessant hunger he felt that drove him to distraction, but I was grateful for even that because it meant that he trusted me at least a little.

It was a little unsettling to watch him nearly cut his own mother's head open because he had absolutely no control over the fierce compulsion that controlled him. For once it was I that had to step in and play intermediary while he composed himself, but I wasn't angry at him for losing control like that. In fact, I felt sorry for him. While I have been able to manage it with time and practice, I have the advantage of being able to carefully balance rational thought with emotion- something he has never been able to do. Peter feels reflexively and thinks later if at all, and that's a very dangerous mix to be so emotionally volatile with so many abilities at your disposal and being pushed over the edge by an intense drive that must be quelled. He nearly begged me to take it away, his eyes red and bloodshot. The guilt must have been overwhelming for him- to have to hurt others when it is against his very nature, but it isn't all that different for me. Welcome to my world, Peter.

Even after we discovered that we had been lied to and he rid himself of my IA, I think his experience has stuck with him. I think, even if briefly, he understood the complexity of my life and the precarious tension that fills every minute of my day. For just a short time I had a brother and someone who got me. It was only a little while, but it meant everything to me.


	14. In Time

**Chapter 14- In Time**

Dear Diary:

The weather recently has been wonderfully warm, unseasonably pleasant by New York standards, and everyone seems to be enjoying it. The nights have been clear and calm, and these are things that I particularly find relaxing. It isn't often that in a city this large you can find any patches of space that aren't crowded or noisy, but last night I was sitting all by myself in Central Park relishing in the soft silence that surrounded me. Central Park really is magnificent. I've always loved the idea of a public space that remains free of more hideous high rises because although I love modernity, having a patch of wild green smack in the middle reminds us all of our roots. Some people may be afraid of being in the park after dark, but not me. I'd make a very poor victim and am extremely unlikely to find myself raped or robbed, so for me it's a nice little getaway.

I sat on a grassy hill by the duck pond and watched them swim in circles as though they were slowly chasing their tails and it felt a lot like my own life, but that's not what got me thinking. Just above the tree line, the city rose all around me like some surreal spaceship with all the lights of futuristic architecture looming over my little allotment of nature. For just a second I felt like a caveman suddenly thrust into the future and faced with ruthlessly efficient modern life and it made me wonder about the direction and speed of progress.

It still never seems real to me that even though I know my body heals all wounds and repairs all incidental damage, essentially rendering me immortal, that I will actually almost live forever assuming nothing comes about to hinder that process. Forever. The very word is almost mind boggling because I just can't conceive of how long that will be other than some vague conception of it being an incredibly long time. But in terms of human evolution, how long has it taken us to perfect our existence? Humans have only been present for a blink of an eye on this planet and for a good stretch of it, we haven't really accomplished much beyond making better hunting tools, farming, and smearing some charcoal on cave walls to decorate them and make the place a bit more homey. It took us over ¾ of our time on this earth just to cover the basics of survival and that's pretty abysmal.

Things didn't really take off until the Greeks in my opinion. Works of architecture, time spent on pondering the meaning of life, advances in medicine, scientific experimentation to better understand the world we lived in, and the very act of questioning what kind of a species we wanted to be was the turning point and what separated us from our knuckle dragging ancestors. Superstition was supplanted by the audacity of reason, the natural world was understood in terms of predictable laws rather than the acts of tyrannical gods, and the usual credo of might makes right was questioned in favor of a more representative democratic system in which each person was given equal consideration. We were finally becoming comfortable with our larger brains.

Still, true domination never took place until we stole the power of Prometheus and thwarted our only true enemy: disease. Food was secure, we could reasonably control our own primal natures to share and cooperate to build cities and govern ourselves, but we were powerless against tiny strains of viruses and bacteria which were our only, and incredibly effective, predators. The black plague and the flu pandemic of 1918 alone nearly wiped us off the face of the earth, but when we developed vaccines against common illnesses and antibiotics to combat infection, we really began to pick up steam- literally. Advances in medicine can be directly tied to the advent of the industrial revolution and from 1900 onward we became an unstoppable force unlike anything the natural world has ever seen. Never before had a species been given the amount of power to shape the environment and bend it to our will as we.

Only in the past 100 years have we leaped forward in our ability to be more and do more and the pace at which we advance is only becoming more frantic. When I was born, no one had a cell phone, computers were essentially huge calculators that only corporations and universities had, and Rubik's cubes were the most high tech toy on the market. Just in my lifespan so much has changed. Everyone has a smartphone capable of connecting them to almost every other person on the planet and enabling access to a dizzying array of information instantaneously. We have sent spacecraft to the furthest edges of our solar system and discovering new planets orbiting other stars in the galaxy is so common it's almost not worth mentioning on the news. We are looking beyond solid state fuel rocketry to power future manned expeditions and if you need something to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon, you can find detailed schematics on how to build a rail gun in your garage with common spare parts and a fleeting interest in physics. _A rail gun_. I shudder to think how much trouble I could have gotten myself into if I had that kind of information available to me as a kid. I could see myself standing in a puff of smoke, glasses askew, gaping in amazement at the series of holes in the sides of my neighbor's garages as far down the block as I could see. Virginia would no doubt be mad at me, but she couldn't deny my genius. "Yes, Mr. Smith, I understand that you're upset that my Gabriel put a basketball sized hole clean through your garage, but he built it all by himself. Isn't he so smart?"

So much has changed in the last 30 years alone, it amazes me to think of what is to come in the next 30. By the end of a normal person's lifespan we could potentially see the end of the common cold, flying cars, or even the rise of artificial intelligence. That's for a normal person- I will almost certainly see these things and then some. People like Peter who are hopelessly optimistic will sigh because they won't see all that human endeavor is capable of, but I'm a bit more skeptical. To me, the story is all too familiar.

My own life is a parallel to that of all of all humanity. The bulk of it was spent struggling in obscurity, scratching out a living in order to secure food, shelter, and a mate if I could ever be lucky enough to find someone willing to dwell in my particular cave. It was a brutish existence until Suresh walked into my shop offering me the vaccine to my own sickness of mediocrity. The possibility of a cure drove me to my own revolution to build defenses and acquire more weaponry, both as a practicality against those who would seek to overpower me and to satisfy my own curious nature and drive to know and understand. The hunger accelerated the pace of my own evolution to heights even I never dreamed of, but unchecked, it will lead to ruin because no matter how civilized we all pretend to be, we are nothing more than conveniently polite cavemen that will lash out with aggression when threatened. People like Peter may see a Utopia of harmonic equity, but I see a wasteland of scorched hostility. I'm glad that I might be around when we finally discover life on other planets and realize that we are insignificant in the face of nature, but it's the collective reaction to that reality that gives me pause. I'm prone to think that there will be mass panic and a call to arms, but that's all speculation and for the time being I took comfort in knowing that at least for the time being I could quietly occupy the small space in history before such things had to be dealt with. I don't know what my life will bring or how changes in my sociopolitical environment will impact me, but for now I can just relish the moments of calm when I can find them.


	15. Alone Time

**A/N: This one's for RalynnFrost, who requested a wallverse musing. Cheers!**

**Chapter 15- Alone Time**

Dear Diary:

My life moves at the pace of a turtle on crack. At times I am so consumed with details of this or that plot or trying to evade Bennet and his legion of GI Joes that I don't have time to turn around. It's a good thing I can't die of starvation because plenty of times it has occurred to me that I have been so busy I have simply forgotten to stop and eat. But other times I want to claw my eyes out from mindless boredom. Half of the mischief I cause is not because I am inherently evil, I do it just for something to do. It's my way of getting other people to come out and play with me I guess. While running from pillar to post can be tiring, it's not nearly as off putting as staring at the walls of my apartment- and not nearly as frightening.

Thanks to Matt, any lull in the action or any time I find myself utterly alone, I feel very uneasy to say the least. The deafening silence reminds me all too well of the mental prison he locked me in and I find myself wondering if somehow I slipped back into some coma state where I am once again left only in my own company. Call it paranoia or PTSD, but when I feel that way I have to calm my own fears by looking out the window just to make sure the city is still alive and teaming with people. I have even considered getting a pet that I can use as reassurance that I haven't reentered my own private hell since Matt wouldn't allow life of any kind, but I've never had pets before and my lifestyle doesn't exactly lend itself to being a responsible owner. It's pretty hard to run for my life at a moment's notice as it is, forget doing so carrying a sloshing fish tank. The true hell of it all is that I don't crave company for myself per se, but I need it to be sure that my world is really there. I feel like a schizophrenic, always questioning my own reality.

I was pretty sure before Matt's little stunt that I didn't need people. Really and truly didn't need anyone for anything other than what they could do for me. I wasn't always that way, but I realized that opening myself to others only painted a target on my heart and I admit that I wasn't quite man enough to endure the pain that repeated abandonment inflicted. I became heartless because I had to- it was a survival mechanism and I did what I had to in order to go on. It was easy for me to believe that everyone operated as I did, seeing me only as valuable as I was useful to them. They didn't care about me and I didn't care about them. It was a game of competition and wit that I was determined to win until Matt changed the rules. It's pretty hard to win a game when there is no one else to play with you.

At first I kind of enjoyed the solitude. I wasn't at all bored because there was plenty to be explored and my mind spent endless hours chewing on the mystery of my circumstances. I had an entire library to myself, an entire city, really. I didn't have to jockey for position on the subway, no more shoulder to shoulder bumping while walking down the street, not one more visitor stopping me to ask if I would take a picture of them or ask for directions to some tourist trap. My world was settled with a blanket of calm, peaceful quiet, but it was unnatural. Things didn't start to bother me until I realized that this wasn't going to be something that would resolve shortly. Around day 6 it finally sunk in that the situation was a bit more serious than I bargained for and the rage and despair took over. I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how I got into the mess, wondering if I really deserved such punishment when all I asked for was help, and futilely trying everything I could think of to escape.

An entire year had passed before I finally gave up. 4 whole seasons, several holidays, and another year of my life had slipped by without another living thing to take notice. I spent my birthday perched on the ledge of the Chrysler building looking down at the tiny sidewalk below trying to think of one damn good reason why I shouldn't jump. I wouldn't hurt anyone in the process and there sure as hell wasn't anyone that would miss me. No one would even have to clean up the mess of whatever was left of me. There was nothing for me but the promise of an empty forever and I couldn't bear it. I remember being so angry, I fell back against the ledge on the roof and sobbed for a good 20 minutes because it was all so pointless. I was convinced that Matt knew exactly what he was doing. As a cop he probably knew what solitary confinement could do to a person mentally and what better torture to inflict than to take someone who is immortal and give them a life sentence? My death, if it was even possible with the way he was able to manipulate the rules of my existence, would do nothing but give him what he wanted so I went on, not really living or dying. Just existing.

And then one day my entire world was once again turned upside down. I thought I had finally lost my mind when I heard the sound of metal clanging in the distance. Things in my world didn't spontaneously make noise and I knew I didn't cause it, which could only mean that I was hallucinating. I had become so used to being the only life form in existence that the possibility of it being another person didn't even enter my mind. It was about as likely as having an alien from the planet Xenda march up to you and shake your hand. Because I had nothing better to do and perhaps had a deep wish to confirm to myself that I had officially gone mad, I followed the noise out into the street like chasing a ghost, turning this way and that through the deserted streets until I heard a definite "Hello?" echoing off the steel and glass buildings. The voice wasn't mine, but it did sound vaguely familiar and I found myself running toward it, desperate. It was another person and I was pretty sure I knew who it was.

The first time I laid my eyes on Peter, I almost laughed in ironic shock. I was convinced that he was some sort of apparition of my own unconscious making, but it was a damn good rendering if I had to say so myself. He didn't seem so amused as I recall and that prompted me to actually reach out and touch him just to be sure he was real. I wasn't even sure if my voice would still work after so many years of not using it, but he understood me well enough to inform me that I was indeed delusional- not about him, but about the length of time I had spent in my abandoned realm. I remember him saying something about needing me to do something with his girlfriend, but the whole time he was talking, I was struggling to sort the overwhelming tide of feelings that surged in my mind. He came for me. Yes, he did so because he wanted to use me, but he came nonetheless. But then the disturbing thought occurred to me that it was yet another of Matt's well planned tricks to give me a little hope, just enough to lift my spirits and make me believe that at least one person in the world gave a damn before making the illusion vanish like vapor before my eyes. It was like all the other times before in my life and I just couldn't handle it. Maybe it was because he really did need me to help him or maybe it was just because he was a legendarily stubborn bastard, but he didn't take no for an answer and he chased me like he had a pack of cheetahs nipping at his heels. He didn't give up- not on me or himself. He came to accomplish a goal and he wasn't leaving until he got what he came for. Finding me was the easy part, leaving turned out to be a bit more difficult.

Awkward doesn't even begin to describe what being trapped with him in my world was like. For starters, even though I knew I had no control over the environment we found ourselves in, I still felt deeply responsible for the general lameness of not having anything to do. No TV, no board games, nothing but old books to occupy our time. I was embarrassingly aware that the world we lived in was a reflection of myself and I could only imagine that Peter found it just a little pathetic. It was like having guests over and nothing in the refrigerator but condiments. Moreover, he was convinced that I had killed Nathan and even this was compounded by the fact that I still wasn't entirely 100% sure which memories that were floating around in my head belonged to who. Every time I said the wrong thing, it rubbed him the wrong way and I didn't mean to. I wasn't purposely trying to antagonize him and in a way I was at least a little afraid that if I didn't knock it off he would go just as quickly as he came. I never really craved the company of others, but I didn't want to think about him not being around. I didn't want to be left alone again. But through it all I was also incensed that for someone who was the beacon of empathy, he was overlooking my own struggle in singlehandedly trying to turn the tide of my nature, sort out what had been done to me in terms of being Nathan's surrogate, and shake the trauma of being so alone for so long. Despite my own pain, I repeatedly fell on my own sword by apologizing to him to help end his even if he didn't believe me at first. It was intimidating to watch him hammer away at the wall with such brutal vengeance because I knew that with every swing he envisioned me and he never seemed to grow tired. I was starting to wonder which was the better way to spend eternity: being alone or being trapped with someone who apparently despised my every breath.

In the end, Peter was the key to our freedom and the first ray of light that shone through the crack like the power of infinity was beautiful in its starkness. Once back in the real world I finally realized what it was to live among others, but the terror of solitary confinement never left me. But for most of it, Peter was with me to ride it out despite his own anger and resentment for me. I think he needed me as much as I needed him, although neither of us would ever audibly admit that in any capacity. I still don't like being around others the way he does, but it does offer a sense of reassurance that I am not entirely alone. I still get nervous when things get too quiet, however, I'm not exactly ready to get a hamster either.


	16. Mommy Dearest

**Chapter 16- Mommy Dearest**

Dear Diary:

Today is Mother's day. I'm not one to circle holidays on the calendar in red so I will remember to send the appropriate cards, gift, etc. For one, I don't need the memory jog because if it's that important, I'll remember it all on my own, but aside from this I have no reason to remember. In fact, I'd love nothing more than to forget.

I typically hate holidays. All of them. When I was a kid, I used to love Halloween because it was the one day of the year that I could run around the house with a sheet over my head, or pretend I was a pirate or anything I wanted to be and get candy for it no less. I suppose it's still the only holiday I still like because I'm not the only ghoul or monster stalking the neighborhood. My costumes weren't elaborate store bought affairs because we didn't have the money to waste on things like that. Virginia never liked Halloween because she said it was the devil's day, but still she let me dress up in ensembles she could piece together enough to say it was a costume. Sometimes she worked for hours, carefully stitching together old scraps of fabric to make a clown suit or hot gluing the hell out of cardboard and aluminum foil so I could be a robot. She didn't want any part of it, but it made me happy so therefore it made her happy and that was the kind of person she was.

She wasn't perfect by any means, but at her very core was me. I discovered this far too late to appreciate it. It really is true that you don't know what you have until you lose it, and I was so wrapped up in my own misery that I didn't really see her for all she was. At the time all I could focus on was trying to smile when I was seething inside because her irrationality was just so damn irritating to me. Her world was filled with impossibilities and leaps of faith- leaps I just couldn't make from my own logical perspective and it very often felt like we were speaking very different languages, never really comprehending one another. I felt this way for years, but if I'm honest with myself a good portion of my anger had to do with my own metaphysical disorientation. I felt so lost and aimless, yet I knew I should be doing more to define my own destiny. Virginia saw it too and reflected my own dysphoria, but she had the ambition to do something about it when I didn't and that was what set me off. With every unhelpful suggestion for my potential career she was essentially calling bullshit on me and she had every right to. She really did think I was capable of becoming the president and that's the kind of faith that I didn't appreciate then and haven't found since.

I have a clearer picture of my own past now than I did when I first learned about being sold from Samson. Surely Virginia knew that her pride and joy was bought on the black market, emotionally damaged from being torn away from his mother's dead body, and maybe even destined to carry the same curse as his father, but she loved me all the same. She really did. After Martin left, things for us got a little hard because she didn't have any marketable skills to speak of and we struggled to get by. She could have pled poverty and turned me over to child protective services in the hopes that I could have all that I needed if I was a ward of the state, but she didn't. I wasn't really her child, but she thought of me as such and she made things work by doing what she had to until I was old enough to get a job of my own and support myself. Yes there were times I went to bed hungry, but I can guarantee there were many more for her. Through it all I can remember one constant thing: her hope that things in the future would be better. I think that this was the start of her living in her dream world, but even if her prospects were dim, she wanted my life to be better than hers and isn't that the dream of every parent?

Time has given me a better perspective of all that I loathed about Virginia. What I saw as illogical was hope in disguise, her fantasies were cloaked ambitions for me, and her clingy nature was her devoted love for me- her precious Gabriel that she saw as perfect despite his own dark secrets. She probably knew of my nefarious potential, but also felt that with enough love and doting she could soothe the stirring beast inside and turn the ugly duckling into a prince if only she showered him with enough kisses. She believed in her cause enough to give her all to it, but in the end it wasn't to be and even to this day I can't bear the guilt of what I've done.

In some ways I'm actually grateful that she didn't live to see me at my worst, to know of the lives I took and families I have destroyed without retribution. She didn't get to see me not only become all that my father was, but to surpass him in power and drive to be the very demon she envisioned me as when I revealed my ability to her. She didn't have to live with the worry of knowing I was hunted and tortured because she would have despite the things I had done to bring it on myself. And it's this dissonance common to all mothers that I miss most. She would have loved me no matter what. She might not have liked the things I did, but her love for me would have never wavered.

She didn't see me perpetrate the evil I have, but she didn't see me save the world either and I regret that almost as much as I regret her death. She had so much faith in me that I could be someone important, someone influential and powerful and I was in a big way. She wanted me to be an investment banker or something of the like, but even she couldn't have imagined that I literally saved New York- once from Sullivan, almost twice if you count Kirby Plaza. I'd like to think that I at least got an assist for Kirby because it wasn't me that was going to kill everyone and I could have stopped Peter if Nathan hadn't stepped in and Hiro hadn't nearly gutted me with his jumbo Ginsu knife. I think that she really would have been proud of me and maybe it would have given her the legitimate bragging rights to her friends that she always wanted and deserved. 'Oh, your son won a baseball game today? Well, you and your son are only alive because of _my_ Gabriel! He saved your lives, you know. Without him you would be a charred skeleton right now. Isn't he such a special boy?'

For better or for worse, Virginia was the only mother I knew and now she's gone. I knew immediately in a very visceral way that something very special was slipping away from me as I watched the light fade from her eyes, scissors buried deep in the heart that held nothing but love for me. Even in her last seconds, there was a sense of calm in her eyes that told me she didn't blame me and she still adored me with her dying breath. What I had done was an unfortunate accident, but it wasn't my fault. It's that look that still haunts me and I can see it perfectly in my mind. I didn't go to her funeral because I was wanted for her murder and I suppose I still am since there is no statute of limitations on taking another's life. My scrape with the law after I woke up in a shallow grave was proof of that because they told me I had killed her while I sat confused and disoriented in the brightly lit interrogation room trying to make sense of memories I couldn't recall and words I couldn't manage to spit out. Still, holding her bloody sweater long after the fact and reading the memories it contained brought back just a little of that feeling of being wholly and entirely loved. It was one of the few times in my life that I nearly cried from grief.

But Virginia is not alone on this day. Alongside her is the ghost of my biological mother- the one I watched murdered in front of my wide, disbelieving young eyes. I don't remember much about her and I can only imagine that her last moments were not as sanguine as Virginia's, but I know that she too loved me deeply and fiercely- enough to give her life to try and prevent the tie between us from being severed so coldly by Samson. To her no amount of money could have replaced me because I was invaluable to her and she took her last breath reaching for me. I don't know what kind of woman she was, but based on her last deed I have to believe that she would have been an excellent mother to me. Sometimes I wonder about her and what we might have done together because I would like to think that she would have appreciated all of my quirks and encouraged my talents. I think we would have enjoyed lots of walks in the park, spending long Saturday afternoons in natural history and science museums, and browsing bookstores and libraries- eagerly sharing the details of our latest read with each other.

I would love nothing more than to forget that on this day of the year, everyone in the country calls their mothers, sends them flowers or candy and tells them they are thankful for all they have done to raise them because I can't do that. To me, the red roses that are to represent love only remind me of the spilled blood of both mothers I have lost. I no longer get to bask in the adoration of the women who value me for who I am no matter what I may have done, and who would be my biggest supporters of my current effort to be a better person and to make them proud. I am a grown man responsible for his own affairs, but I will always carry with me a dark space in my heart where the warm glow of a mother's love used to shine. While I always have a sense of being alone, on this day in particular I feel like an orphan and I have no one to blame but myself.


	17. Who's Your Daddy?

**Chapter 17- Who's Your Daddy?**

Dear Diary:

I realize that I didn't write anything about Father's Day and I guess that makes me a bad son, but it is true that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree in that respect. Anyway, it isn't like anyone's around to be mad at me for the oversight. I shamelessly spent my day sleeping in, cleaning my apartment, and browsing the web for a good buy on the latest tech gadgets. My mundane reality would be enough to bore anyone to tears, but the only use I have for the artificial holiday is the sales. I know that makes me crass, but I just can't force myself to give a damn.

I've spent enough of my life and energy obsessing about the men who were supposed to be in charge of my upbringing and failed miserably, so I won't spend another minute on the utter ineptitude of others. Besides, at some point I have to man up and take responsibility for my own situation and sleep in the bed I made. Can I really say that it was Martin's fault that I became a murderer? Awkward maybe, but not a psychopath- that was likely more Samson's fault than anyone's. Funny how the worst of my traits came from someone who had absolutely no part in my life for almost 30 years. This is perhaps one of the very few things on which Mohinder and I can agree: genetics are a very powerful force that sometimes trumps all will and desire of the carrier. Even so, I know that I can't blame my amino acids for my misdeeds no matter how convenient it is.

While I was scrolling through reviews of the latest cell phones and tablets on the market, I noted a picture of a father and son pair on a store's ad that reminded me vaguely of Peter. I never thought of Peter as a model, but he certainly had the whole disinterested emo thing going on with his hair for awhile that would have made him fit right in. It was disturbing to think of him hawking skin tight jeans or worse yet, underwear, but for some reason people are drawn to him like flies to honey and he might be able to move a few train cars of jeans with that oddly lopsided smile of his. At any rate, it occurred to me that he was someone a father could be proud of. All American, boy next door, kitten squeezing, old lady kissing, tree hugging, boo-boo mending Peter. In other words, everything that I am not, never was, and likely never will be.

But it isn't all bad. True, I don't think I ever made anyone look at me and think I was the prime vessel to carry forth their DNA, but I think I'm in good company in that respect. Two words: Matt Parkman. Is there anything more ridiculous than a beat cop who never made good in his job, his marriage, or even in his superhuman ability? Matt is content with mediocrity in all aspects of his life. He even named his son after himself- an act of sheer laziness in my estimation since it obviously wasn't as a testament to his own stellar legacy. What could be easier than just tacking "Jr." onto his own name? As much as I hate "Gabriel" it's a sight better than "Samson Jr." and it at least shows a smidge of creativity. I'm not exactly going to credit Samson for that because it very well could have been my mother that named me. In fact, it probably was because I think I was about as important to him as a fly that got into the house, but I can't say that with any degree of certainty.

Living with Matt and being tied up in his mind-blowingly dull existence complete with mistrusting, nagging wife and needy infant made me question the very essence of the so called American Dream. He was living it and by extension making me live it as well, but I don't think anyone was truly happy. Suffice it to say his home life was very different from the way I grew up, but my general hatred for Matt aside, what was most bothersome to me about the whole situation was that I was unwillingly thrust into the role of husband and father. Handling Janice was easy enough and I soon had her singing my praises in ways that almost made Matt homicidal and it had very little to do with my IA. It wasn't rocket science, but it did require active listening and a little creativity in the sack. All in all not things that required a great deal of effort or energy, which just speaks to his contentment with the status quo. I sat through enough boring and ultimately pointless stories of bothersome coworkers and jerk bosses to see how checking out was worth the tradeoff of infrequent sex with what amounted to a warm corpse, though. I almost wanted to go to her job and do my thing just so I wouldn't have to hear about them ever again.

Still, several strange things happened when I picked up little Matt Jr. and held him as a means of menacing his father, the first being that the boy didn't cry- at least initially. The most simplistic answer for this was that to him I looked like Matt, but although I am no Dr. Spock when it comes to kids, I do believe that they have the ability to pick up extrasensory information that we adults have become immune to. There I was, trying to be as intimidating as possible, and a small creature with the most rudimentary good/bad sensory inputs wasn't particularly alarmed. It made me wonder about his cognitive state and in the short time I had I decided that either he was fearless, clueless, or secure enough in the arms of strange males that he felt no need to question his safety. I had absolutely no intention of harming him and he probably sensed it, making him a sight smarter than his father who was in near panic mode over seeing me hold his child. But it also made me pause and consider Matt's reaction. What if it were my child and some known force of unstoppable evil was dangling him in front of me like a pawn in some head game? It made me seriously question my own capacity for parenting. Would I be willing to sacrifice myself for my child and save them or die trying, or would I be like Samson and casually shrug and turn my attention to carefully winding thread around a fishing lure? Cold as it sounds, there is great wisdom in feigning disinterest and Matt should have called my bluff. What would I have done in that case? Slice a pediatric sized line across his little head? Hand him back to Matt and mumble "never mind" as I walked away with my head down and hands shoved in my pockets? Demoralizing as it would have been for me, it probably would have been the latter since I never have and never will harm defenseless children. There are just some lines that even I can't make myself cross.

When it comes to parents seeing their children as mild disappointments, I found that I wasn't the only one who felt insignificant. While Angela was pretending to have a set of triplets rather than twins, I had the opportunity to learn a little more about the Company and its founders. What I discovered was that none of the younger generation even remotely lived up to the legacy of their parents. Matt's father was a near ninja with his mind control, Arthur was almost as powerful as they came in his day, and even Hiro with all of his Bushido honor code paled in comparison to his father's unwavering commitment to the secret society's mission to singlehandedly hold back the tide of evolution. Peter in his own emotionally belabored way was also seeking the approval of his own father and I saw it clearly in Arthur's eyes when he would look from me to him in his 7th floor office that no matter Peter's potential, he clearly preferred me- a man he knew for a fact was not his own flesh and blood. As a rule I don't usually feel sorry for anyone, but even I have to admit to moments of Fremschamen for Peter when he surely realized that his dad preferred a near total stranger to his own son. Ouch.

It seems none of us, no matter how great we eventually became, could ever quite measure up and I don't know if that is a generational thing or if it somehow reflects our own individual struggles with what it means to be a special. I can only speak for myself, but I for one was determined to be more- to do more than any other living being on the planet. I wanted so desperately to matter to anyone that I inadvertently made myself a target and got everyone's attention. I'm really not sure what's worse: being ignored or not having a moment's peace. But what I did learn is that in one way or another we all struggle to escape the shadows of the trees from which we fall in a desperate effort to find our own moment in the sun. From tiny seeds grow mighty oaks and if they are lucky, they become the tallest tree in the forest. That's my goal and even though I have accomplished a lot from very humble beginnings, I still have a lot of growing up to do.


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